As we’ve pointed out in previous posts.
(1) Doctors in New South Wales know they don’t need to be concerned in the slightest that any of their patients might complain about any treatment they’ve received from them, or should have received from them.
(2) Doctors in New South Wales know they can almost get away with murder.
(3) Doctors in New South Wales get to know that often those who don’t do such a good job, don’t strive to do their absolute best for their patients, are often better off than those who do, they don’t have to work so hard, they make more money, and so on.
(That’s not to say, that there aren’t doctors in New South Wales, many of them, who try their hardest to do their absolute best for their patients, even though they know that there are others who are not doing this who are better off than they are.)
Readers, that’s how it is in New South Wales.
To us the position is worse than if we didn’t have a Health Care Complaints Commission! If we didn’t, perhaps doctors would be thinking that if they were slack, that if they didn’t do a very good job, there would certainly be someone their patients could complain to – perhaps their local Member of Parliament, perhaps the Minster for Health, perhaps even the Premier. But they soon learn that they are free to really do whatever they like, because their local Member of Parliament, the Minister for Health, the Premier, AND Sue Dawson, the Health Care Complaints Commissioner, COULDN’T CARE LESS.
One of the things that fascinates us about all this is that, although we’ve been working on helping ourselves and others to find the best doctors in New South Wales, and to avoid those who perhaps may not be the best, for more than 20 years, never worked so hard, we’ve never quite believed, until the last few days that we’d never get a scrap of help in this from those at the top. This when, all along, it’s been kindergarten stuff to establish that they couldn’t care less, by just sending them emails.
Over the years, we’ve posted so many posts, and sent so many emails, and hardly, if ever, got responses that were at all helpful.
Why are we talking about this at this time? Because we’ve come to believe that it’s all our fault, the fault of us to people – we don’t differentiate enough between those who are the best, and those who may not be there best. The people at the top don’t care because we don’t care. We don’t do the homework, made so much easier by modern technology, that we need to do to make it more likely that we will end up dealing with the best. About which more later.