NEWS-HR

Excelcare Australia Limited will deal with a s.739 (Application to deal with a dispute) before Fair Work Commissioner Booth in his Brisbane chambers (Millar).

Three female nurses have been assaulted at a public hospital in Melbourne’s north by a male patient, police say. Security officers tackled the man at Footscray Hospital in the early hours of Thursday and he will remain in hospital to undergo a mental health assessment. A woman is being treated for serious but non-life threatening injuries, while the other two women have minor injuries and Western Health said it is providing full and ongoing support to those involved.

Uniting Care Queensland will contest a s.394 (Application for unfair dismissal remedy) lodged for hearing before Fair Work Commissioner Hunt in his Brisbane chambers (Wenman).

Hynes Legal has appointed Helen Kay as an associate director.

A s.185 (Enterprise agreement) application from St Luke’s Care for the St Luke’s Care Employees and Health Services Union New South Wales Branch Enterprise Agreement 2017-2020 has been endorsed by Fair Work Commissioner McKinnon sitting in Melbourne on 27 April 2018.

A man in the grip of ice addiction used family ties to a Wollongong doctor’s clinic to dupe Medicare into financing his hidden $500-a-week drug habit, eventually siphoning a whopping $65,656.95 from the public purse. Daniel Patrick Mulquin’s mother Linda Mulquin sobbed from the public gallery of Wollongong Local Court on Thursday as her son was jailed for four months and ordered to repay the money. Mrs Mulquin, a receptionist at the Smith Street clinic of her psychiatrist brother, Dr Anthony Durrell, believed her son was struggling with mental illness when she arranged for him to visit the clinic to assist her with odd jobs, as a way of keeping him occupied. But Mulquin, 31, used his position to illegally access the Medicare Easyclaim system, which is used to process patient and bulk bill claims via the EFTPOS network. The access allowed Mulquin to electronically claim he had visited a doctor and paid his bill in full, entitling him to a Medicare benefit. Between 2 December, 2013 and 7 August 2015, he made 173 fake claims for “rebates” worth up to $496.75 at a time. On 157 occasions, he did this by either swiping or manually entering his debit card. On another 16 occasions, he lodged a claim at a Medicare Service Centre, which then required processing. In October 2014, at the height of his offending, he collected almost $11,000 after claiming to have visited a doctor 24 times in a 31-day period. In court on Thursday Mulquin told Magistrate Michael Stoddart he became a casual user of methylamphetamine in 2008 after a partner introduced him to the drug. His usage spiked after he was hospitalised with severe lacerations to his face and hand following a domestic dispute in 2010. From 2011 he used the drug as a way of escaping feelings of depression and anxiety, his volatile relationship and job frustrations, he said. By 2014 he was using the drug at least every other day, and also started using GHB heavily in 2013 and 2014. The court heard he suffered a breakdown after he was made redundant from his job in March 2014 and he then moved from Sydney back to his parents’ Mount Ousley home. He formally confessed his crimes to the Department of Health office on February 6, 2017, about three months after he kicked his drug habit and began getting his life back on track, regaining employment and studying an IT diploma. He said he had informed his uncle of his offending in August 2016, and “I understand he called Medicare to inform them”. Magistrate Michael Stoddart condemned the scale and nature of Mulquin’s deceit.

The Health Services Union and Eastern Health have a s.739 (Application to deal with a dispute) in front of Fair Work Commissioner Cribb in Conference Room E – Level 6 and Conference Room F – Level 6 in Melbourne at 2.30pm today.

NewDirection Care has promoted Alasdair MacDonald to chief operating officer.