Two applications by Health Services Union (s.472 – application for an order relating to certain partial work bans) (s.459 – application to extend the 30 day period in which industrial action is authorised by protected action ballot) are set for hearing before Commissioner Cribb in conference room E & F – level 6 in Melbourne at 2.30pm.
August 15, 2017
Three elderly residents at a Mulgrave nursing home have died of flu-related symptoms after an outbreak of the illness swept through the centre. The victims, aged 81, 94 and 103, all had other underlying conditions and died last month at the Royal Freemasons’ Monash Gardens home.
August 15, 2017
South Australia’s new $2.3 billion Royal Adelaide Hospital is about to take its first patients. The hospital’s outpatient service will open today, less than a month before it starts treating emergencies and taking admissions. Premier Jay Weatherill says the move has posed challenges but the new RAH will be the best hospital in the country. ‘I’m confident that with the planning that’s gone into this that it will go smoothly,’ he said. Mr Weatherill says the hospital is also on track to open its emergency department from September 5.
August 15, 2017
A jar with chemicals has been removed from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital after a scare. According to a Department of Fire and Emergency Services spokesperson, the jar was found at the Nedlands site. As a precaution, police and firefighters were called out to the scene with parts of the hospital evacuated. It remains unclear what the substance was inside the jar. It’s the second time in less than three months parts of SCGH have been evacuated due to a chemical find.
August 15, 2017
An 88 year-old man with severe and advancing dementia accused of murdering his wife of 56 years has had the charge dropped, after a court ruled he will never be fit to plead to the allegation. John Huggins has since March been charged with the murder of his 76 year-old wife Joan, whom he was accused of stabbing to death in their Piara Waters home. WA’s Supreme Court today heard that a neighbour of the couple found Mrs Huggins’ body after becoming concerned when speaking to Mr Huggins as he wandered around in the front yard of his southern suburbs home. The court was told today that a highly disoriented Mr Huggins told his neighbour that “there is a dead little girl in the house”. When the neighbour investigated, it was in fact Mrs Huggins who was inside, with fatal stab wounds. Today, Justice Stephen Hall sat on a fitness to plea hearing, where he was told that since his arrest Mr Huggins had been an in-patient at the Armadale hospital, being treated for his advancing dementia, which had markedly deteriorated in the last month. Justice Hall was told there was a strong, circumstantial case against Mr Huggins, who was being cared for by his wife at the time of her death after a long and apparently happy marriage. The court heard that previously, another violent incident had occurred when Mr Huggins became upset about his wife researching respite care on the internet.
August 15, 2017
Two Victorian mental health patients have taken their fight against compulsory electro-shock therapy to the Supreme Court. A man named as “PBU” has received six electroconvulsive therapy sessions against his will while hospitalised for mental health issues in Melbourne, and is fighting an order for more, Victoria Legal Aid says. A woman, “NJE”, who is receiving treatment has also been ordered to undergo 12 sessions against her will. “Each of my clients understands this procedure and is terrified of it,” barrister Emrys Nekvapil told the Supreme Court of Victoria on Monday. The case focuses on whether a person has the capacity to give informed consent and how treatment options should be considered.
August 15, 2017
A former senior SA Health employee convicted of orchestrating an elaborate scam involving fake work-related death threats has been taken into custody after an appeal court ruled her home detention sentence was “manifestly inadequate”. Simon Craig Peisley, 41, and Tabitha Lean, 39, were found guilty of more than 40 deception charges for faking racist death threats to themselves, their children and colleagues. Lean was director of the Aboriginal Health Services division of SA Health and her husband was also employed there. As a result of the threats, SA Health paid for the couple to live in apartments at North Adelaide, paid for extensive private hospital stays and psychological care, and sent them on interstate holidays. The couple also received WorkCover payments and had been negotiating a compensation payout of $580,000. The sentencing judge described the offending as “bizarre” and “outrageous” and said it had “shattered” the reputation of the department.
August 15, 2017
NSW public hospitals have been graded by their doctors in training in the Hospital Health Check Survey report published Monday. No NSW hospital scored an “A” mark for their overall performance in the report published Monday by the Alliance NSW (AMA NSW and Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation). Among greater Sydney’s hospitals, the following scored an overall C: Bankstown-Lidcombe, Blacktown, Campbelltown and Camden, Concord and Canterbury, Liverpool and Fairfield, Nepean, RPA, St George and Sutherland, St Vincent’s, The Childrens Hospitals, Prince of Wales and Westmead. Only The Royal North Shore, and the North Sydney LHD hospital grouping of Hornsby, Manly and Mona Vale hospitals scored an overall “B” mark. The two measures with the most C and D grades were “rostering and overtime” and “wellbeing”, with no NSW hospital scoring A and only a handful scoring B. RPA, St Vincent’s, Bankstown-Lidcombe, Westmead, and St George and Sutherland hospitals each scored two D marks, one for “rostering and overtime”, and the other for “wellbeing”.
