A prominent Townsville doctor has been stood down after having sex with a patient and fathering a child with another. Dr Praveen Kumar, director of the My Family Doctors at Kirwan, has had his registration suspended on August 30 after an investigation by Health Ombudsman Leon Atkinson-MacEwen. The allegations relate to two women Dr Kumar had hired as staff, treated as patients and engaged in sexual relationships with, with the first complaint filed in 2015 and another in July this year.
September 20, 2016
A woman has been arrested after she allegedly hit two people with her car and collided with several vehicles before assaulting a paramedic south of Toowoomba. Police said the incident started when the 29-year-old woman and a 28-year-old male argued with two residents of a Glen Avon Crt home in Glenvale after they were asked to leave a party at about 5pm yesterday. The male and female occupants of the house were standing near the woman’s car when she reversed and the pair were knocked over by the passenger door which was still open at the time.
September 20, 2016
Shocking new footage of patients attacking staff at Queensland’s biggest hospital has been released as authorities ramp up their efforts to protect health workers. The CCTV captured at the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital show three separate incidents where staff narrowly avoided injury at the hands of a patient, including one in which a man tried to use a metal object to smash a glass door. More than 3000 hospital workers are physically or verbally assaulted by patients or visitors each year, according to Health Minister Cameron Dick.
September 20, 2016
Former Health Services Union (HSU) boss Kathy Jackson has appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, to face 70 charges of theft and deception. Jackson was charged last month following a royal commission investigation into union corruption. Last year the Federal Court ordered Jackson to pay $1.4 million to her former employer, the HSU. In court yesterday her lawyer Philip Beazley asked for more time to look through the brief of evidence, which was 5,000 pages long. The court documents revealed Ms Jackson is accused of stealing more than $270,000 from the HSU. She is alleged to have spent another $100,000 on travel, including trips to Hong Kong, Los Angeles and a stay at the luxury Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. According to the documents, more than $110,000 was spent on reimbursements, including an alleged one-off HSU payment of $63,000, which was described as an “honorarium entitlement”. The documents also allege she spent more than $570 on flowers, $1,800 on posters and more than $1,000 for a treadmill. Jackson was granted bail on the condition she surrender her passport and not leave Australia.
September 20, 2016
A former Hawke’s Bay trainee doctor duped two district health boards into revealing confidential medical information about members of his family without their consent. Hirron Fernando then used the information from the Capital & Coast and Hawke’s Bay DHBs as evidence in a UK court case against the two family members. Staff at the DHBs were appalled and apologetic when they realised Fernando had deceived them into breaching privacy by falsely claiming he was treating the pair, a tribunal has heard. Details of the scam emerged on Monday at a Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal hearing in Hastings where Fernando was found guilty of professional misconduct and struck off the medical register.
September 19, 2016
The longest-serving secretary of the federal Department of Health, Jane Halton, has resigned from the Australian public service, two years after taking up a job as secretary of the Department of Finance.
September 19, 2016
The car crushed by an express train at a Surrey Hills level crossing was not trying to evade boom gates and had its reverse lights on moments before it was hit, eyewitnesses say. The two elderly women, Denise Dobbyn and Carmel Iseppi, were neighbours in a Camberwell retirement village. The women, aged 73 and 71, died on Wednesday when their small black Hyundai was hit by a train travelling at 80km/h at a Surrey Hills level crossing.
September 19, 2016
The NSW health minister is concerned reports that paramedics arriving at work drunk will tarnish the service’s reputation, despite Deputy Premier Troy Grant saying he still trusts our “local heroes”. Stressed paramedics are reportedly taking opiates and administering drips to themselves to get through shifts. Health Minister Jillian Skinner said she was happy to consider anything that could help struggling paramedics, and admitted she was worried about the state ambulance service’s reputation.
