The state’s largest union says Tasmania’s health system is wasting money on staff investigations, including one that sidelined a paramedic over a patient who had been dead for seven hours.
Health and Community Services Union State Secretary Robbie Moore told a Legislative Council inquiry into the Health Department’s finances yesterday that standing staff down had become the “default” response to complaints.
He said a paramedic was stood down for about eight weeks over an allegation they failed to resuscitate a patient, until the union took the matter to the Industrial Commission.
Moore said the patient had died about 2am and the ambulance arrived about 9am to find family members attempting resuscitation on a bed.
The case is understood to date back to 2023.
“There is no common sense there. They take a default position standing down paramedics when we’ve got a shortage,” Moore said.
“We’ve seen doctors and others that I’m sure other organisations have talked about, but we see this all the time.”
Moore estimated the union had between 40 and 60 members facing investigations in the health system, with about three new cases a week.
Union representatives told the committee the investigations typically took six to 18 months, with stood-down staff on full pay.
Moore said the process had “gone backwards” since the Commission of Inquiry into child sexual abuse in institutional settings, with tougher procedures meant for allegations involving children applied across the board.
“I think everyone accepted that allegations around children would be dealt with differently given what had happened and what came out of that inquiry,” he said.
“But they did it for everywhere else.”
He said investigations were outsourced to lawyers at significant cost and often examined facts that were not even disputed.
“It is just such a waste that we could be doing the investigations ourselves,” he said.
Moore said the cost flowed on to sick leave and workers’ compensation, with absences often only covered through overtime.
The union also told the inquiry the Royal Hobart Hospital lost about two years of Medicare revenue by using an MRI machine more than 10 years old, which made it ineligible for rebates.
A committee member said the department had previously denied having any out-of-date equipment.
Moore said what he described as cuts to outpatient services at the Wellington Clinics would push more patients into ambulances and emergency departments as their conditions deteriorated.
A Department of Health spokesperson said the department had a responsibility to take all claims seriously and ensure they were thoroughly investigated, “particularly where allegations concern patient safety”.
The spokesperson said allegations were managed under a revised 2024 Employment Direction and the head of agency could end an investigation or suspension if new information emerged.
Staff under investigation had access to employee assistance providers, the spokesperson said.
The department said a number of fixed-term outpatient contracts had been extended by three months while a staffing review was undertaken.
“It is important that staffing across all health services match with the needs of our patients and that these are reviewed regularly,” the spokesperson said.
