Wednesday, 21 September 2022

 Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:01): My question is to the Minister for Health. With a heartbreaking seven children having died in Victorian emergency departments since April, senior paediatricians wrote to the government pleading not to disband the clinical committee that provides oversight and expert health advice, yet the committee, the Victorian Paediatric Clinical Network, was disbanded by the government. Why was this decision allowed to occur against the advice of senior paediatricians?

 Ms THOMAS (Macedon—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services) (14:02): Can I first take this opportunity to offer my condolences to the families whose children have died in tragic circumstances. As is always the case, Safer Care Victoria inquires into every unexpected death or adverse experience or outcome in our healthcare system, and that work will now be underway or indeed is already underway in some of those circumstances. Of course anyone, but particularly a child, experiencing harm in a place where they expect to get better and to be well cared for is a tragedy, so my focus as minister is on doing all that I can to make sure, with Safer Care Victoria, that we learn from these experiences. Safer Care Victoria is an independent agency. It was formed by our government in 2017. It has a responsibility to work with healthcare services and healthcare workers to understand what has happened so that parents, in this case, get the answers that they deserve. I might point out that indeed in some of these instances the coroner may well also be involved.

In relation to the question regarding the Paediatric Clinical Network I can confirm that Safer Care Victoria, which works every day to develop a culture of open reporting and transparency in our healthcare system and of learning from mistakes when they are made, has been refining its current clinical engagement strategy. They are now putting in place a learning health network system. This is a system that is utilised overseas and has been clinically reviewed, and indeed the Lancet and the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine have both recommended this approach. Paediatrics is at the heart of each of these learning health networks. Be they focused on acute care, perioperative care or cardiac care, paediatrics is included as part of each and every one of these networks. So again these are very distressing times, but I want all Victorians to be assured that here in Victoria, where these events occur, we will look into them, we will find out what has happened and what has gone wrong and we will make sure that we learn from it so it never happens again.

 Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:05): Record numbers of sentinel events or critical mistakes involving children have been occurring under this government, and tragically some children have died. A further 33 Victorians have died because they could not get through to 000. Victorians are dying in the back of ambulances waiting for beds, and seven Victorian children, as we know, have died in emergency departments in the last five months. What will it take for the government to finally admit that Victoria’s health system is in crisis and lives are being lost through continued government failure?

 Ms THOMAS (Macedon—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services) (14:05): Once again I will make the point that any death that occurs in our healthcare system is reviewed, or can be reviewed, by Safer Care Victoria or indeed by the coroner as is appropriate. In terms of determining the cause of death, this is for clinicians and the coroner and certainly not for politicians.

The questions in relation to ESTA have been well canvassed in this place and elsewhere. I am confident and I know that the Minister for Emergency Services is implementing and we are seeing change take effect at ESTA to ensure that we are now meeting the response times that are set down for them.