An email sent to Premier Minns, using the Member for Parramatta’s email address, on Friday, 27 October, 2023. (We couldn’t find an ordinary email address for the Premier himself.) Hopefully it will be passed on, and we will get a response from the Premier in due course – it’s life and death stuff.
Premier Chris Minns
Dear Premier
To us, the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission is a blight on the State of New South Wales, and has been for at least the last 20 years – nothing has changed under previous Governments, and there doesn’t seem to be anything to indicate that anything has changed or will change under the Premier Minns Government. It’s a joke!!! Just comical!!!
Briefly.
According to it’s own website, the Commission received 9,159 complaints from NSW people during 2022-23, i.e. more than 750 NSW people, each month, on an average, took the time and trouble, to lodge a complaint with the Commission. And it would appear to be no reason to think that complaints wouldn’t have continued at this level further into 2023. And it would appear to be reasonable to assume that at least half of these would have been about Doctors, (not Nurses and Miscellaneous others,) say 400 a month. And that a high proportion of these would be alleging that a Doctor hadn’t done a very good job.
Against this figure, during the last month the Commission has issued 4 media releases in relation to Doctors!!!! And only 1 of these was about a Doctor not doing a very good job!!! Two of these were not about a doctor NOT doing a very good job – they were about male Doctors acting inappropriately in relation to female patients. And the other one – and here it’s hard to stop laughing – was about the fact that the Doctor, during the course of carrying out an operation, had accidentally dropped a “chin implant,” on the floor, and had simply picked it up and carried on regardless!!! For which the Doctor received a reprimand.
Easily the biggest concern about all this, is that it creates what is called a “reward system” in which bad doctors make more money than good doctors – which seems to be how it is in New South Wales.
As well, we recently came across this:-
“It has been recently estimated that 350 people a week are killed in Australia by medical error and 1,000 a week are permanently injured.”
(I am one of those permanently injured, and I have got nowhere with all my complaints.)
What can we the people do about all this?
There seems to be no ordinary email address for Premier Minns readily available, but perhaps, next time we decide to take time and effort to lodge a complaint with the HCCC, we could use the ordinary email address of our local Member of Parliament to copy our complaint, and the responses, if any, from the HCCC. Perhaps if, in this way, Premier Minns started to get copies of 400 complaints to the HCCC each month, and any outcomes, it would make a difference – although probably not.
Regards
info@questionsmisc.info