A damning report into the Mackay Base Hospital's obstetrics and gynaecology unit is expected to create shock waves for maternity services across Australia.
The report highlighted "egregious failures" at the Mackay unit, resulting in women suffering lifelong physical and mental harm, including three who lost babies after receiving "inadequate care".
An independent investigation team found the management of consultant staffing at the hospital's maternity unit fell "below best practice standards", noting it was unsatisfactory to meet requirements with short-term locums.
Gino Pecoraro, the president of the National Association of Specialist Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (NASOG), said the findings would cause a ripple effect around the provision of maternity services throughout the nation.
"A frightening number of O&G [obstetrics and gynaecology] units in hospitals in regional Australia are only staffed that way," Dr Pecoraro said.
"All of the hospitals that I do locums at, they're all totally run by locums.
"There is a mal-distribution of doctors and an unwillingness to work where and how state health departments want them."
Pleas for private obstetric sector to survive
Dr Pecoraro said the "collapse of private obstetrics" meant many obstetricians were leaving the profession or opting to concentrate on gynaecological services.
"Those who previously provided services to public hospitals, particularly in regional areas, no longer do so when they stop private obstetrics," he said.
"NASOG has been beseeching both state and federal governments to work together to ensure that the needed private obstetric sector survives.
"Its demise will ultimately make public obstetrics more difficult to staff leading to the tragic situation we are unfortunately seeing today replicated around the nation."
The disturbing Mackay Base Hospital report highlighted 21 cases of bladder, ureter and bowel injuries in maternity and gynaecological patients being recorded in just over a year.
Investigators noted the expected incidence in a hospital of similar size to be no more than one case across 12 months.
Handing down the findings of the report yesterday, an emotional Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath announced the Mackay Hospital and Health Service board (MHHS) had been issued with a show cause notice asking members to give reasons by this Friday as to why they should not be dismissed.
She also appointed Robert Herkes, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare's former chief medical officer, as a special adviser to the MHHS board for the next 12 months to provide independent expert oversight.
"Dr Herkes will provide expert guidance to the board on their clinical governance responsibilities and will report directly to me on the progress by the health service in the implementation of the recommendations from the investigation," Ms D'Ath said.
Public hospitals set for patient safety shake up
Ms D'Ath choked back tears as she apologised for the harm that had been caused to Mackay women and their families, pledging a patient safety shake-up across the entire Queensland public hospital sector in the wake of the distressing findings.
As part of Queensland Health's plans aimed at strengthening safety and quality processes at public hospitals, she said a centralised reporting process would be set up allowing staff to escalate quality and safety concerns if they failed to be addressed at a local level in a timely or proper way.
"Staff members must be listened to when they raise complaints and concerns," Ms D'Ath said.
The move towards better patient safety procedures across the state follows revelations that Mackay Hospital whistleblowers had to reach out to patient advocate Beryl Crosby – who lives 600km away in Bundaberg – for their complaints to be heard.
Ms Crosby took allegations of patient harm to former MHHS chief executive Lisa Davies Jones, who set up the independent review in October last year.
"These poor people were devastated that no-one was listening and so they came to me," Ms Crosby said.
More than two dozen women, including three mothers who had each lost a child, received care at the Mackay O&G unit that was so substandard, they have been offered compensation.
Four clinicians involved in adverse outcomes have been referred to the Office of the Health Ombudsman and are no longer employed by Queensland Health.
A fifth health worker, referred to in the report, is on leave and has resigned.
Complaints process 'fundamentally flawed'
Late on Friday, Ms D'Ath met with board chairs and chief executives of all Queensland Hospital and Health Services to "reinforce my expectation on their oversight of safety and quality across the state".
"We know that there can be adverse outcomes in the health sector," she said.
"It's what you do with those adverse outcomes that is critical.
"We owe it to these women and their families to ensure we do everything to learn from this experience."
Ms Crosby said she was concerned similar issues were happening in public hospitals across the state.
"I've been raising this issue for a long time about the complaints process, which is fundamentally flawed," she said.
"Patient safety is not a big priority, I believe, for boards. They're more concerned about meeting targets.
"They need to be across patient safety and incident rates and how they learn from it.
"You can't just keep having more and more incidents and not learning from it."
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists withdrew the Mackay Base Hospital's accreditation to train junior doctors in the specialtylast year – before the review was announced.
Mackay HHS interim chief executive Paula Foley told journalists on Friday the hospital's accreditation to train junior doctors in obstetrics and gynaecology would be restored from February next year.
