Hospital denies cheat claims

By Melissa Meehan
A FORMER Dandenong Hospital doctor says that political pressures forced hospitals to “fudge figures” to gain bonuses.
Dr Richard Cathie told ABC Radio that hospitals such as Dandenong were “starving for funds and resources” and “fudged” their figures to “reach the bonus payments associated with performance indicators”.
A spokeswoman for Southern Health said while Dandenong Hospital was found to have reporting issues, it was not found to have deliberately altered waiting list figures.
The news comes as the Auditor General’s office released its report Access to Public Hospitals: Measuring Performance.
The report highlighted four Victorian hospitals, including Dandenong, that were found to have significant problems in reporting hospital performance.
The report cited data inaccuracies, data manipulation and poor quality control processes.
Prior to his resignation in January, Dr Cathie was a member of Southern Health’s senior emergency medical staff at Dandenong for five years, and prior to that was at Monash Medical Centre.
Dr Cathie said that many patients who stayed in the Dandenong emergency department for more than 24 hours were not recorded as staying for that amount of time.
“That’s a black box to me … Those pieces of information that would cost the hospital bonus payments,” he said.
Southern Health has strongly denied Dr Cathie’s claims.
“No data is inappropriately manipulated at Southern Health, and the Auditor General’s report did not find any evidence of inappropriate manipulation of data at Dandenong Hospital,” the spokesperson said.
“The Emergency Department patient management system, Symphony, tightly controls security, compliance and monitoring of all data in real time.”
She said that like all health services, Southern Health reported data to the Department of Health Services at various times during the year regarding both emergency and elective surgery cases.
“Southern Health has also developed an internal audit program to ensure that accurate data is provided to the department,” she said.