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Dozens of senior clinicians at Bendigo Health have joined calls for hospital management to take “urgent action” to prevent microbiology services being relocated to Melbourne.
The doctors voiced their concerns in a letter from the hospital’s Medical Staff Group to acting chief executive officer Peter Faulkner, in response to a decision by pathology provider Australian Clinical Labs to move routine microbiology testing to its laboratory in Clayton.
The MSG, which comprises 49 clinicians from across all specialties, warns Mr Faulkner in the letter the decision “poses significant detrimental clinical risks to patients, adversely affecting clinicians’ ability to deliver high quality patient care”.
The MSG is firm in expressing universal disappointment with another failure to effectively engage clinicians and respect the clinical implications of decisions affecting delivery of the core organisational goals.
- Senior doctors at Bendigo Health
Compounding the doctors’ concerns, is what they describe as a “perennial failure to engage and consult with clinicians on issues that impact on the ability to deliver safe, effective and efficient healthcare”.
“The MSG is firm in expressing universal disappointment with another failure to effectively engage clinicians and respect the clinical implications of decisions affecting delivery of the core organisational goals,” the letter reads.
“To rebuild trust and confidence in the current management and administrative leadership of Bendigo Health, we believe there must be two-way honest, transparent and respectful engagement between the executive and clinical staff.”
The group also calls on hospital administrators to leave the door open to a return to a public model of pathology service delivery and asks that current staff at the laboratory to be retained “until there is clarity over the longer-term plans”.
“We understand the importance of ensuring continuity of service in the short term. However, we also believe that all options, including the possibility of return to a public-run laboratory, should be explored in an open and transparent manner for the longer term,” the letter reads.
“We would therefore ask that all possible efforts are made by Bendigo Health to maintain the employ of the current microbiology scientists until there is clarity over the longer-term plans, as once their expertise is lost it will be almost impossible to regain.”
It comes as Victorian Health Minister Jill Hennessy personally intervened to ask the state’s healthcare safety agency, Safer Care Victoria, to assess any risk to patients stemming from the decision to relocate microbiology services.
“The Minister for Health has asked Safer Care Victoria to make a visit to Bendigo Health [on Monday] to make an assessment of the changes to determine if there are any safety concerns and any findings will be taken seriously,” a spokeswoman for Ms Hennessy said.
“We have been clear that quality and safety is our greatest priority for our health services.”
A spokeswoman for Bendigo Health said SCV representatives met with executive and medical staff during their visit to the hospital on Monday and would consider their feedback as a matter of “great urgency” before preparing a report for the department.
The spokeswoman said Bendigo Health took the doctor’s concerns “very seriously” but rejected their assertions of a failure to consult with them sooner.
“We are taking the doctors’ concerns seriously and are awaiting independent, expert, advice from Safer Care Victoria as to the extent of any risk,” she said.
“While Bendigo Health has made a range of inquiries regarding the delivery of microbiology services, we are confident Safer Care Victoria have the appropriate expertise to provide robust advice and we will defer to their advice on this matter.”
The spokeswoman said while the hospital was “disappointed” with ACL’s decision, it was not within its power to compel the company to retain staff or return to a public model before the contract between the parties expired in 2021.
ACL also operates a lab at Geelong’s Barwon Health and continues to provide routine microbiology testing there, with a company spokeswoman saying it was meeting contractual requirements at both hospitals.
Bendigo Health is responsible for negotiating the contract with ACL and the pathologists union, the Medical Scientists Association of Victoria, is seeking the release of details of the agreement at the Fair Work Commission.
“If contractual obligations exist to continue to run a microbiology lab, as we believe they do, it’s really important that information is on the table and we’re able to discuss it,” MSAV secretary Paul Elliott said.
But the Bendigo Health spokeswoman said there was no provision in the contract requiring microbiology services to be maintained on site.
Meanwhile, some microbiology samples are already being sent to ACL’s Clayton lab for processing and correspondence between the union and staff at the Bendigo lab seen by the Bendigo Advertiser details what the worker refers to as “another [cerebrospinal fluid] stuff up”.
The worker told union officials a spinal fluid test required for an infant patient at the hospital was returned from Melbourne without being “cultured”, and Mr Elliott said while there was no suggestion the patient had suffered as a result, the incident showed it was time the hospital started listening to the concerns of its doctors and scientists, with the evidence “coming thick and fast”.
“This is exactly what we’re saying will happen,” he said.
“It’s happened before day one, before the actual change is implemented it’s already happening so I don’t know what more evidence the hospital needs to say this won’t work and we can’t go ahead with this proposed change.”
The ACL spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on the mix up, but has previously said urgent microbiology testing would continue to be done on site in Bendigo, while only non-urgent tests would be redirected to Melbourne.
“We don’t expect there will be significant changes to turnaround times,” she said.