One of our readers has provided us with these details as to how he got on when he made a complaint to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission about a doctor in a Government Hospital, Dr XXX.
The basis of his complaint was, (1) that there had appeared to be a deficiency in some advice he’d received from Dr XXX, (which it was found out later, that there was,) and, (2) that when he’ realised this, he’d emailed Dr XXX giving him the opportunity to make good on this apparent deficiency, but the doctor hadn’t responded. The upshot of which was that the patient assumed that if the doctor had had anything important to tell him he would have got back to him, in other words, he trusted him, and it wasn’t until later that he found out that there HAD been a deficiency, and that trusting him could have had quite disastrous consequences, although, more by good luck than good management, it hadn’t.
But Commissioner Sue Dawson and her people dismissed the complaint, telling our reader he had nothing to complain about!!!
We believe that our readers could be given 100 guesses as to the basis for this dismissal and still, not one of them would come up with the one Dawson and her people came up with on this occasion.
Briefly:-
(1) that it was all the reader’s fault in that Dr XXX had specifically told him NOT to trust his advice in any way, but to seek other/proper advice as soon as he left the hospital, and,
(2) that Dr XXX couldn’t be blamed for not responding to our reader’s email, because, at no stage had he told him that he could use his email address to seek “further advice.” (When, of course, he hadn’t been seeking “further advice,” just inviting him to make good on a deficiency in advice he’d already given.)
My, Ms Dawson and her people must be SO intelligent, coming up with excuses like this! They, of course, tell 98%, if not 99% of the people who complain about NSW doctors that they have nothing to complain about – they always seem to come up with something. Perhaps they use this excuse quite often?
Of course there are two concerns about this. Firstly, that Dawson retains her position, when her track record provides SO many examples of responses like this – she must be laughing all the way to the bank. And secondly, that it’s obvious that no one in the Berejiklian Government cares – we’ve never got any indication that any of them do, even Premier Berejiklian herself?