Health bureaucrats continue to bungle
RDA NSW President Ian Kamerman has called on the North Coast Area Health Service (NCAHS) to stop blaming problems at Bellingen Hospital on rural doctors and rural communities, who are trying to fix the problems.
Dr Kamerman made the comments following an article in the The Coffs Coast Advocate, 12 January 2010, where an unnamed NCAHS spokesman blamed local doctors for "miscategorising patients" leading to statistical errors and presumably poor decisions about the future of Bellingen Hospital.
“Obviously the unnamed spokesman is unaware that Area Health Services devotes significant resources to employ Patient Record Management Staff whose role it is to categorise patient stays,” Dr Kamerman said.
“This is not and never has been a role for medical staff whose responsibility it is to provide quality clinical care, including medical treatment and diagnosis. It is a clerical task to translate a diagnosis into statistical categories.”
The community of Bellingen on the NSW North Coast is fighting for the survival of its much needed local hospital, and RDA NSW believes the community deserves a health service that caters for its needs.
“The community of Bellingen has waited 18 months for the Area Health Chief Executive to fund the Bellingen model of obstetric care. The model is so successful it’s being introduced into other communities, but has still not been started up in its home town,” Dr Kamerman said.
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