Wednesday, 18 June 2025

Sentinel events

Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (18:08): (1722) My adjournment matter this evening is for the attention of the Minister for Health. I have raised on a number of occasions over the last few years the issue around sentinel events. The government released their report on the eve of the long weekend – it was very inconsistent with last year’s release. It is still very behind and has no consistency to form the reports. Nevertheless what is very concerning is the number of sentinel events that are arising.

Members might recall that I raised in this place in February of this year a number of reported sentinel events at Latrobe Regional Health, where there have been nine events in five years, and some of those have included children. Sentinel events involving children have been an issue for a number of years, and there have been some very, very sad cases, especially through the COVID years when there were a lot of issues that were impacting on the health system and some of the issues that arose from that, including the unfortunate and untimely death of children, and they have been reported.

Following that increase due to the deterioration in children in 2021–22 the government announced the Safer Care for Kids project in 2023, promising to implement three recommendations to address this concerning increase. It included a family escalation system for families to raise concerns about children when their conditions deteriorate; a virtual paediatric emergency consultation system; and it mandated the Victorian children’s tool for observation and response, or ViCTOR. It appears that the latest update on the department’s website in relation to the Safer Care for Kids project was a post on 20 August 2024 reporting that the project has progressed to phase 3, which involves piloting and testing. Now, the reason I am raising this is this has been ongoing for a number of years. The Safer Care Victoria website states that it will be at least another 12 months until this is up and running, and that is three years since the government first announced that the program was to be undertaken. The AMA has raised concerns about the lack of consistent oversight and reporting within Victoria’s health system by writing to the Minister for Health in November 2024 and Safer Care in December 2024, and I have raised that issue in this place before and argued that point. Dr Jill Tomlinson, the AMA’s Victorian branch president at the time, said in March this year that the response to date did not indicate to her that they would act any time soon on calls for change. So the action I seek is for the minister to explain the delay in implementing these important measures to improve outcomes for the care of children in our health system, and particularly around that rollout of the phase 3 pilot of Safer Care for Kids.