NSW public hospitals once more becoming thought of as a place you go to die?

When I was a nipper a hospital was considered a place you went to die.
By the time I became an adult hospitals had become places where you went to be treated and maybe if you were lucky, cured.
Now as I get even older and read the growing litany of medical errors, I begin to wonder if perceptions are swinging back again and we're once more becoming afraid of hospitals?
Take this old man left on a bedpan for so long in a public hospital that he had to have surgery for the ulcers this disgusting neglect created.
NSW Health Care Commission media releases over the last twelve months don't instill a lot of confidence either. Neither does the growing list of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists etc. who are either reprimanded, suspended or deregistered in this state.
If you want a real scare - just read this May 2009 Medical Journal of Australia article which looked at the chances of survival if a baby is born in a public hospital:
"After adjusting for the same maternal variables, serious adverse neonatal outcomes showed similar differences between the two hospital groups.
Term babies born in public hospitals were more likely to require high levels of resuscitation, to have an Apgar score < 7 at 5 minutes, and to require admission to a neonatal intensive care facility or special care nursery (Box 3).
Perinatal death was twice as likely for babies born in public hospitals.
Even using a composite for adverse perinatal outcome (patients with at least one adverse outcome), the unadjusted OR was 1.30 (95% CI, 1.28–1.33) for public hospital deliveries.
When the adverse perinatal outcomes were compared individually by method of birth, the differences between public and private hospital sectors persisted for all the adverse outcomes studied (data not shown).
For example, for spontaneous vaginal births, the rate of Apgar score < 7 at 5 minutes was 0.9% in the public group compared with 0.6% in the private group.
The differences for forceps deliveries (1.6% v 1.1%), ventouse deliveries (2.1% v 1.4%), and caesarean sections (1.3% v 0.5%) showed a similar pattern.
The rates of perinatal death were similarly lower in private hospitals for each method of birth: spontaneous vaginal birth (0.2% v 0.1%); forceps delivery (0.5% v 0.2%); ventouse delivery (0.2% v 0.1%); and caesarean section (0.3% v 0.1%)...
Conclusion: For women delivering a single baby at term in Australia, the prevalence of adverse perinatal outcomes is higher in public hospitals than in private hospitals."

So Prime Minister Rudd - when are you going to fix this appalling state of affairs?

The one liner doing the rounds in the Emerald City

Events in Macquarie Street - and elsewhere - last week
produced this gem:

"The NSW Government is like IKEA - one loose screw and the whole cabinet falls apart."

Thanks goes to The Fitz Files in The Sun Herald for that ripper!

A WTF moment for NSW Health

Last week if you were placed on hold by the Maclean District Hospital switchboard, along with the canned Musak you would have heard a voice tell you that this hospital had three rooms with en suite and Austar television available for in-patients with private health insurance.

Now Maclean District Hospital is a public hospital in the North Coast Area Health Service and it is sometimes stretched for beds, so it is not unknown for wards to be culled for people to send home so that new (and sometimes more urgent) cases can be admitted.

Which makes one wonder - if a well-off retiree whose insurance is paying out to the area health service and an old-age pensioner on Medicare were to be assessed in such a cull, which one would be sent home?

If you picked the retiree as the patient most likely to be sent home I suspect that you wouldn't get the cigar - human nature and hospital bottom lines just don't work that way.

These three beds are not a good look for NSW Health and definitely not a good look for a Rudd Government seeking to work cooperatively with the states towards a better public health care system.

Mungo doesn't mess about when it comes to L'l Johnnie Howard

This classic Mungo MacCallum phrasing turned up in Crikey last Monday:

"And speaking of past leaders ... John Howard bobbed back up in the bowl last week to give us a bit of advice on, of all things, human rights. Truly the man has no shame.

The Prime Minister whose government incarcerated innocent children behind razor wire until they literally went mad and abandoned its own citizens to illegal imprisonment and torture by a foreign power now warns us that judges and lawyers should not be allowed to tamper with decisions made by politicians elected by "ordinary" people. Any attempt to change our unsurpassable current arrangements would represent the final triumph of elitism and be an abrogation of the very idea of the sovereignty of the people."