Several orthopaedic surgeons have resigned from the ACT’s public health service in protest over what they've described as a 'deteriorating' environment where administrative priorities have trumped clinical decisions about patient care.
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00:00With a career in orthopaedics spent in Canberra, Dr Cindy Vrancic says recent decisions by
00:08health service officials had her calling time on practising in the public system.
00:14We've had a certain shift in the focus of the way that service is being delivered and
00:18it seems to coincide directly with the budgetary constraints and the overspending with the
00:22health system.
00:23She's not alone, the soon to be former head of the Canberra hospitals orthopaedics department
00:29has also thrown in the towel.
00:31The bureaucracy has finally just essentially pissed me off enough to, after 27 years, tell
00:39them where they can go jump.
00:40According to last month's Canberra Health Service's inpatient waiting list report, just
00:457% of category 1 patients who were ready for care were overdue for orthopaedic surgery
00:51within the 30 day guideline, but for category 2, 64% of patients hadn't been seen within
00:58the recommended 90 days, and for category 3, who guidelines say should be treated within
01:03a year, 28% hadn't had their surgery.
01:07Last month, a group of surgeons wrote to the health minister expressing a vote of no confidence
01:12in the administration of the health system.
01:14Canberra Health Services set up an operations centre to streamline patient flow through
01:19the hospitals.
01:20It was designed to tackle waiting list challenges, but the resigning surgeons say it hasn't worked.
01:26If there's a conflict between, say, a long wait elective patient who's been waiting to
01:31have, let's say, their hip replacement, and there's a trauma patient who also needs a
01:35similar surgery but there's only one set of equipment, as the clinician on site we want
01:40to choose the trauma patient, but we get overridden by the operations centre that say, no, no,
01:46you must not cancel any elective cases.
01:49The way you don't have a waiting list is you actually fund the surgeries.
01:53The operations centre is run by clinicians.
01:56It's run by doctors and very senior nurses who have years and years of experience in
02:01Canberra Hospital and in the ACT public health system.
02:04The minister argues the surgeons don't always have visibility of the bigger picture that
02:09informs decisions, but a new escalation process is being considered.
02:14There are trusted senior clinicians that they can go to to say, hang on a minute, I think
02:18the wrong decision's been taken, can we just have another look at this?
02:21Without meaningful change, the resigning doctors say their colleagues might not stick
02:25around to argue the point.