government hospitals

Wesfarmers is a public company, said to have more than 107,000 employees in about 40 subsidiaries. And guess what? If you ever have any problems in dealing with any of it’s employees in any of it’s subsidiaries, there’s an ordinary email address you can use to seek help – it’s info@wesfarmers.com.au, which is prominently displayed on it’s website. We know, because, a few months ago, when we were having problems in dealing with the people in a New South Wales Officeworks store, (Officeworks is one of their subsidiaries,) we used it to seek help, and got a response within 2 or 3 hours from a person who was incredibly helpful, and, in no time at all, all our problems were sorted.

Why have we mentioned this? Because Wesfarmers illustrates the fact that modern technology makes it possible for even large organisations to be organised in this way – for people through the whole organisation to be accountable. In particular, NSW Health could be organised in this way.

There could be people who have the job of providing help to those dealing with  anyone in the whole NSW Health organisation. (It would be interesting to know how many have this job in Wesfarmers? They obviously have enough to provide responses within 3 or 4 hours.) At present, of course, NSW Health is a million miles away from being like that.

We have written extensively about how, in 2015, a couple went to the Fairfield Government hospital for help in having a baby and got none, and the baby died. And how, in the more than five years since, we’ve worked on and off on (a) trying to find a government hospital whose people guarantee that couples going to them for helping having a baby would always get help, that they will never end up having to try to deliver the baby themselves, and (b) on trying to find out whether anything has changed at the Fairfield Government hospital? And we’ve had another go at the latter in the last couple of days, and, of course, got nowhere.

We’ve always said that we believe that the CEO of the hospital in 2015 should have gone to gaol, and that perhaps, if Paul Crowe, it’s present CEO, has done nothing to change things, perhaps he should go to gaol too. (Perhaps we’ll go to gaol for writing this stuff.) We sent an email to the hospital 6 days ago, and, after 4 days, having heard nothing, we sent a reminder 2 days ago, and eventually got an email yesterday from a “Paul,” presumably Paul Crowe, largely irrelevant and unintelligible, the first paragraph of which was this:-

So the emails we’ve sent over the years using our normal address have been going into their “junk” folder – typical Fairfield hospital and typical NSW Health stuff!

We have no idea what was meant by, “This website is also blocked from our NSW Health server.” Which website? What NSW Health server? But in any case, it’s blocked.

And we’ve been using an old Fairfield Hospital email address have we? How the hell were we supposed to know this? We went to the hospital’s website to get the latest email address and there wasn’t one, so we used one we’d used in the past.

Incidentally, as far as up-to-date email addresses for the people in NSW Health are concerned, we sent an email to Natasha Maclaren-Jones, the Parliamentary Secretary for Health, yesterday, reminding her that we had sent the following to her in an email on 19 Jun. 2021, to which she hadn’t responded, and asking her if there was yet a list that was less than 22 years old?

We’ll let you know if we get a response this time.

If you Google Fairfield Government hospital you are also given access to 131 Google reviews of the hospital, in nearly half of which 1 star out out of 5 is given when you can’t give 0 out of 5 – and if you read many of them, you almost can’t stop crying. Clearly Paul Crowe doesn’t care. But to us, the real concern is that those in the top levels of the NSW Government don’t care that Paul Crowe doesn’t care.

Over the years we’ve tried to raise so many issues with Premier Berejiklian, but our emails aren’t even acknowledged. Perhaps our emails have just gone into a “trash” folder too. They may as well have!

info@questionsmisc.info

As has been widely reported in the media, back in 2015, a Mr and Mrs Amone went to the Fairfield Government hospital for help in having a baby, and got none, they had to try and deliver the baby themselves, and the baby died. Mr Amone is said to have testified to the Coroner investigating the baby’s death that, as the baby started to come, he went to the door of the delivery room and shouted out for help – and none came. In other words, with the way the hospital was managed at the time, everything else had priority over helping a couple in having their baby.

Various issues arise from this.

The first and obvious one is whether the CEO of the Fairfield hospital at the time was a suitable person to be holding his job if that was the way his or her hospital was organised at the time.

A second is whether anything has changed with the Fairfield hospital at the time.

And thirdly, which hospitals, Government or otherwise, GUARANTEE that, if couples go to them for help in having their baby, that they will get it – that they won’t end up having to deliver the baby themselves.

info@questionsmisc.info

If the “sixty-four-dollar question” is Googled, this is the result that comes up.We are using the term as short for, “If couples come to your hospital for help in having a baby, do your people GUARANTEE that they would get it, that they would never be left to try to deliver their baby themselves without any help?“

In an effort to get an answer to this question this is being sent to the people in the various Government Hospitals.

“My wife and I are expecting a baby in about six weeks. If we came to your hospital for help in having it, is it possible for you to guarantee that we’d get it – that we wouldn’t end up having to try to deliver the baby ourselves without any help. There’s been a lot of publicity lately about one couple who went to a certain hospital for help in having their baby and got none and the baby died. I hope you can appreciate our concerns.“

Of course, we don’t believe it’s “difficult or complex to answer” – we believe it comes down to “Yes” or “No.”

Blacktown & Mt Druitt Government Hospitals: Some emails swapped, but, in the end, no answers.

Fairfield Government Hospital: Email sent on 5 Mar. 2021. So far, not even acknowledged. 

Royal North Shore Government Hospital: Email sent on 5 Mar. 2021. So far, not even acknowledged. 

If “NSW Government Hospitals” is Googled, this is part of the results:-

To us, the hunt is on to locate even one in which it’s people GUARANTEE that if couples go to them that they won’t be left to deliver their baby themselves, with all the risks that entails. To us it’s a people management thing – about ensuring that the situation in the hospital won’t be the same as Mr and Mrs Amone found it, where everyone seemed to think there were more important things to do than providing help for a mother in having her baby.

info@questionsmisc.info

Further to our previous post, it still haunts us that, in the Coronial Enquiry into his baby’s death, Mr Amone testified that, as his baby was coming, he went to the door of the delivery room and shouted out for help – and none came, and the baby died. 

To see if it might be any different with the Blacktown and Mount Druitt Government Hospitals, on 28 Feb. 2021, this was sent to them using their email form – we couldn’t find an ordinary email address anywhere on their website.

A prompt reply was received from a Laura – which we mislaid, we don’t know how – so we sent it again and got this second response from Laura.

This is the correspondence that followed..

This was sent on Wed. 3 Mar. 2021 @ 9.28 am and we are awaiting a response – so we haven’t advanced at all have we? We got everything else except an answer to our question.

As we keep saying, modern technology has made finding out what organisations like the NSW government hospitals and the people in them are like – just send them emails. It’s then a matter for us, the people, and our leaders like Premier Berejiklian and Minister Hazzard to decide what to do about what’s found out.

info@questionsmisc.info

A 10 Mar. 21 update: Nothing further received.

Back in 2015, a young couple, Mr and Mrs Amone, went to the Fairfield Government Hospital for help in having a baby, and got none – and the baby died.

During the Coronial enquiry into the baby’s death, Mr Amone testified that, as the baby was coming, he went to the door of the delivery room and shouted out for help – but no one came. Obviously everything in the hospital at the time had a higher priority than helping couples have their babies

(Incidentally, what the Coroner decided amounted to, “Cheer up everybody, the baby would have died anyway!” – nothing about how the chances of the baby’s survival might have been improved if any help had been provided.)

All this resulted in us emailing Brad Hazzard, NSW’s Minister for Health and asking if he thought there would ever be any government hospitals in the western suburbs of Sydney to which couples could go for help in having a baby, knowing that help would be GUARANTEED!

In response, we got this letter from Ms Elizabeth Koff, who has the grand title of Secretary of New South Wales Health (who we believe is on $600,000 a year, no less.)

As we’ve often said, this is the least helpful, most useless letter we’ve ever got in our whole lives.

What to do? What to do?

All we can think of is that this question be sent to the Government hospitals in the western suburbs of  Sydney and other Government hospitals – “If couples come to your hospital for help in having a baby, do your people GUARANTEE that they would always get it, that they would never be left to try to deliver their baby themselves without any help?” And that those who provide a “Yes” answer be publicised.

Of course, Premier Gladys Berejiklian, or Minister for Heath Brad Hazzard, or someone in our government should be arranging for this to be done – but it appears that this is not the sort of thing they do.

Of course, it shouldn’t be left to “pot luck’ as to whether any of the couples in New South Wales won’t end up having to deliver their baby themselves, as happened to Mr and Mrs Amone – but we are yet to see any indication that anything has changed since 2015, and/or that anyone who has the power to change things cares.

info@questionsmisc.info

This blog aims to be the sort of blog Premier Berejiklian should have set up years ago – after all she’s been the head of our government for more than four years now. (When we say this, of course, in one sense it’s silly – about which, more later.)

We believe there should be a single ordinary email address that the people of New South Wales can use to get in touch with people who can provide help in dealing with any of the states’ government hospitals. But how is it at present?

Back in November, 2019, it was widely reported in the media that a 21 month old girl who’d been in a car that was involved in an accident had been sent home from the Wyong Government Hospital with a broken neck!!! and we’d been wondering whether appropriate action had been taken about this, if any. We would have thought it would have been quite easy to get the hospital’s CEO’s take on this. But having searched, unsuccessfully, for any way of contacting him or her, we decided to seek the help of the Ministry for Health, sending them this email.

This is what we got back:-

So the Ministry of Health didn’t know how to contact the hospital’s CEO either!!!.

We can’t remember if we followed this up in any way back then, so, today, on 28 Feb. 2021 the email address they’d provided us with was used to send this email.

(We’ve no idea why, when we did this, the lines were put into what we’d written, as shown – it was certainly none of our doing.)

We’ll let you know if there are any developments.

info@questionsmisc.info