Shards with Sheeds at Caulfield Hospital

Helen with Kevin Sheedy at the Ashleigh Ricketson Centre in the Caulfield General Medical Centre.

Kevin was there to launch the Diabetes Institute Physical Activity Expo for ages 50+ in the Glen Eira area on 9 May. Click here to learn more about the International Diabetes Institute’s program, Lift for Life .

Melbournians Dying Because Ambulances Are Late

50 Victorians are dying each year because ambulance crews can’t reach them in time, ambulance crews have claimed.

On 900 hundred occasions last year, ambulances called to emergencies took at least 20 minutes to respond, according to documents obtained under Freedom of Information by the Herald Sun.

The worst delays happen 20 km from the city and beyond, where ambulance services are thinnest, the newspaper reported.

Sunbury was the worst hit with 60 delays. Other black spots included Melton with 49 delays; Pakenham with 28; Werribee with 22; Healesville with 20 and Cranborne, Lilydale and Mornington with 16. The situation is so bad that paramedics said that residents in some outlying suburbs should consider moving if they suffer a serious condition that could require urgent care.

Other paramedics said they could not guarantee residents on the city fringe they could reach their homes within 12 minutes, the optimum time required to save a life. Of the 910 patients forced to wait 20 minutes or more; 325 waited at least 25 minutes; 96 waited half an hour or more and nine waited for more than 40 minutes.

Patients included those suffering from heart attacks, strokes, car accidents and pregnancy complications.

Figures show last financial year that the Metropolitan Ambulance Service (MAS) missed its target of responding to 90 percent of all Code One emergencies within 14 minutes. The average wait stretched to 15 minutes. Healesville, which dealt with 202 emergency calls in the first three months, recorded 90 percent response times of 29 minutes in January; 28 minutes in February and 27 minutes in March with 20 cases taking even longer.

In January the 90 percent Code One response for the Coldstream-based ambulance was 35 minutes with two calls taking even longer. Other major ambulance black spots include Gladysville- 32 minutes in February; Cockatoo – 27 minutes in January; Portsea – 22 minutes in January and Emerald 20 minutes in January.

These figures are unacceptable considering it takes three minutes for the brain to start dying if you stop breathing. Paramedics have said the lack of local resources; particularly in growth areas, verges on the criminally negligent.

Earlier this year I met concerned residents from the Kinglake area in Parliament. They are desperate for a new ambulance station but have had no luck in persuading Bronwyn Pike of the urgency of their needs.

Doubts Growing About HealthSMART as Contractor’s Share-price Plummets

Victoria’s troubled HealthSMART project is under further scrutiny after the share-price of a major contractor plummeted. The $323m project, which is designed to manage the Victorian health system’s IT needs, is over 18 months late, or as a government spokesman reluctantly admitted to The Sunday Age in March, “depending on what is meant by target dates, there has been slippage across the program”.

Now there is more trouble brewing, with The Australian reporting that the company iSoft, which has a $22.5m contract to supply patient management software has lost 75% of its market value this year.

iSoft’s woes stem from its contracts with Britain’s National Health Service. In January its shares fell sharply after it revealed to the market that “…it is now clear that delivery of iSOFT application solutions to NHS Trusts will occur, in general, later than previously expected by the company. “ This followed the November publication by The Sunday Times of a leaked email which showed that massive delays are expected across the 6 billion pound ‘Connecting For Health’ project.

These problems were known at the time iSoft was granted the $22.5m contract for HealthSMART.

This not the first time that questions have been asked about HealthSMART. In August 2004, the DHS admitted that the tender process had been compromised after internal briefing documents were leaked to a potential bidder. This followed the revealation in July by Australian Financial Review that the diasppointed tenderer IBA had

“…. raised concerns over the probity of the patient and client management tender and lawyers acting for the software maker ….[had] sent two letters to HealthSmart’s probity auditor querying the involvement of one Human Services executive in the project.The executive, IBA has claimed, was formerly employed by TrakHealth, had personal relationships with a senior iSoft executive and a consultant to the company, and attended social functions as a guest of iSoft during the tender process.

The government has been extremely secretive about the whole HealthSMART project. When The Sunday Age asked in March for details about 7 different contracts they were given the run-around. As Jason Dowling commented:

THE State Government’s spin doctors were in overdrive when The Sunday Age questioned them about contracts for a new health IT system. After waiting a week for a reply, this is how seven different questions on how many consultants were employed under seven different contracts were answered: “HealthSMART engagements are based on a capped cost of deliverables and are not for particular individuals – organisations are engaged that have clearly demonstrated they can fulfil the tasks required. Whether one resource is allocated to ensure delivery of this service or 10 resources, it is the decision of the organisation providing the services. The terms and conditions of the engagement clearly state the expected deliverables.” The answer was repeated for seven separate questions. People are now “resources” in the world of spin and the public has no right to know how many people are being employed under taxpayer-funded $1000-a-day contracts.

In September Dowling reported that a company controlled by a former DHS contractor had won a closed tender worth $425,000 a year. The contract, worth $849,107, was granted to the company Arbiter with the work to be split between two people, Norma Fredrickson and Anthony Bibby. Bibby later left the company – and was promptly employed by the DHS to project manage HealthSMART. The government claimed that the price paid to Arbiter would drop but was unwilling to say by how much. Fredrickson had earlier received other contracts as part of HealthSMART, but again the government was unwilling to say how much they were worth. At that time Bronwyn Pike’s spin-doctor Ben Hart was indignant at suggestions that HealthSMART was running late. “It is on track both in terms of timelines and the budget — there is no basis for allegations that it is behind schedule,” he told The Sunday Age. Except that it wasn’t on time.

Given Labor’s track-record, would anyone like to bet that it’s on buidget?

500 Victorians Die Each Year Waiting For Surgery

About 500 Victorians are dying each year while waiting for surgery, The Age reports today. Doccuments obtained under Freedom of Information laws showed that 1507 people were removed from waiting lists in the last three financial years because they had died. The Royal Australian College of Surgeons is urging the government to investigate the figures. While not all the people on the list died because they didn’t have their operation, some, like the 29 people who needed cardiac surgery, almost certainly did.

DEATHS BEFORE SURGERY

YEAR NUMBER

• 2002-03 504
• 2003-04 527
• 2004-05 476

NUMBER OF DEATHS BY SPECIALITY

• Urology 395
• Opthamology 339
• General Surgery 247
• Orthopedic 197
• Plastic 144
• Vascular 71
• Ear, nose and throat 38
• Cardio-thoracic 29

Source: Department of Human Services, quoted in The Age, 23/5/06

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