Ms ROSOL – Minister, yesterday you told the Legislative Council’s hearing on Health that the Department of Health has appointed a senior doctor to manually audit patient death records. This follows the final findings from the reportable deaths review. We appreciate the information that was provided to the Committee yesterday, but we do want to clarify a few things. We understand this doctor will be reviewing both historic and contemporary cases. How will this work be prioritised? Will you be taking further evidence and input from current and former staff as part of that?
Mr BARNETT – Thanks very much for the question. I indicate that we certainly are taking this matter very seriously. That’s why we acted so quickly to appoint an independent panel to look into this matter and report back. We now, through that independent panel to the department, have made those referrals to the coroner. There’s further work to be undertaken. In terms of that work, I will refer to the acting secretary to speak to that important work.
Mr WEBSTER – It’ll be a combination of things. If staff want to identify through the process, through the chief medical officer, that there are cases they believe should be looked at, then they can be given to the senior doctor to have a look at. The second part of it is randomising it. We think that’s really important, that we have a random sample, so that we’re checking that we are doing the process, and we’re not just looking at cases that are identified, but where someone might be uncomfortable speaking up, or an area where they’re uncomfortable speaking up. We got a random sample so we can actually look that we’re doing the process correctly. It’s a combination of both.
Ms ROSOL – From what you’re saying I’m just not clear, will they be reviewing every death certification Dr Peter Renshaw was involved with during his time or only randomised?
Mr WEBSTER – Prior to 2019 we had a manual process around the reporting of deaths and, in fact, prior to 2019, the reporting doctor of a death wasn’t recorded in Births, Deaths and Marriages either. We will have to manually look back prior to 2019 and literally pull files off a shelf. Some of them will hit to Dr Peter Renshaw’s cases, some will be other people’s cases. But we want to assure people that we looked at all cases from 2019 to 2023. What we’re doing is going back and actually randomising to make sure that we pick up any prior cases as well.
It is important that we note that it’s almost an impossible task to go back to 1989 when Doctor Renshaw was originally appointed Director of Medical Services given the manual nature of the health records so a random sample is the best way to pick them up.
Mr BARNETT – We also have an answer to the member for Bass from the Acting Secretary.
Mr WEBSTER – In relation to the question about when we did the assessment after the coroner’s recommendations, the assessment was done by the clinical director in March 2023 and we’ve revisited that a number of times since.
Ms ROSOL – Thank you.
