Disgraceful: They couldn't run a hotdog stand #1

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Winging it
Hospital staff use petty cash to buy food for patients
January 26, 2009

MONTHS after a country hospital served baked beans for three weeks because NSW Health had not paid its meat bill, staff are still using petty cash to buy food over the counter for patients because businesses are refusing to deal with the health service.

Meat supplies were cut off to 15 hospitals across the Greater Western Area Health Service in September after the Dubbo Meat Company waited four months for a $30,000 bill to be settled.

It is believed that since then managers from the area service have approached businesses for credit but have been refused, leaving staff to pay cash over the counter for sausages and mince for patients' meals.

"Nobody wants to touch them," one butcher said. "It's awful because you don't want to deny sick people, but when you are a struggling little business you can't afford to wait so long for your money."

The Herald has been told that nurses in the emergency department at Mudgee Hospital were buying blood glucose strips and alcohol testing kits from a pharmacy last week because suppliers have refused to provide them, and two toilets in the wards were blocked for two weeks this month because the plumber declined to fix the pipes unless he was paid $400 owed to him.

Staff have also been forced to use petty cash to buy light bulbs and computer paper because the companies supplying them have not been paid in months.

The Health Minister, John Della Bosca, said the area health service owed about $60 million when he took over the portfolio four months ago, and now owed less than $23 million.

The chairman of the Mudgee Health Council, James Lonergan, said running out of blood sugar tests for even one day in an emergency department showed how bad things had become.

"People here look at the State Government spending $5 million on crackers on New Year's Eve when we can't get a $400 bill paid."

The owner of Dubbo Meat Company, Mark Knaggs, said hospital staff were "seriously embarrassed" at having to buy goods over the counter with petty cash.

"We were going backwards. Even if they had agreed to pay us smaller amounts regularly, we would have ridden it, but they didn't."

Kelvin Waterhouse sold his butchery in Nyngan last month, walking away angry that the local hospital regularly left him up to $4000 in debt and still owes him $1201.

"It is shocking, just unbelievable. The guy who bought my shop is going to honour the contract until June, and then he wants to wipe his hands of them," Mr Waterhouse said.

"I was ringing [the health service's head office in] Bathurst every few days asking for my money. They'd tell me they had sent a cheque, then next time they'd tell me I had banked it. I am still waiting for my money."

Steve Miller, the owner of Country Fruit Distributors, in Dubbo, said he was close to cancelling his deal.

He was owed $20,000 by the health service last year until he went public by ringing a radio station.

"They settled that bill pretty quickly, but now they have fallen in a hole again … They're hospitals so we don't like to refuse them but it is getting to the point where I just can't carry [the debt] any more."

Mr Miller is now owed $4700 by Dubbo Base Hospital, $1000 by Coonabarabran, $1700 by Nyngan and $300 by Parkes - all due three months ago.

Last October the Herald reported that nurses at Dubbo Base Hospital were borrowing bandages from a vet for patients and were regularly without basic supplies such as sterilisation fluid, garbage bags and surgical gloves, and in September X-rays were unavailable because the health service had not paid its bill to Kodak.

Mr Della Bosca said: "There are still issues that we're getting on top of, but I'm quite confident over the next few weeks and months they'll see some of those problems disappearing."
 
If you think it's bad in the Central West it's nothing in comparison to Broken Hill.  They had a miscarriage in the patient waiting room just last week. 
 
Nothing in NSW health is much to be proud of. A government that has been around too long - but also many interests group that simply want their own piece of the pie - plus burgeoning medical costs as we become more like the US in deregulated medical care!!! (Just don't have a relative need hospital treatment in the US!!!)
 
The health system was a lot better run when hospitals had their own Boards.  The Area Medical service experiment has been an unmitigated disaster.  The bureacrats have NFI ( like in most things).

I reckon there ought to be a law passed that before being allowed a career in bureacracy one needs to spend 10 years at the coal face of the industry they're going to regulate.  Particularly for the clowns in health, fair trading etc. 
 
And Bank's.  The CBA recently appointed an executive to oversea its Business and Private banking areas who has been with the Bank for a whole 18 months. 

He previously worked for McKinsey and Co consultants who all they used to do was come into a bank branch and ask all the staff what needed fixing/changing, put it in a report and charge the Bank millions of dollars for it. 

I wonder who this bloke will get his ideas from now?

With people like this running Bank's now it is no wonder they are writing off bilions of dollars and will do so for the next 5 years.
 
Canteen Worker link said:
To agree with both Tookey and Mata in the one thread - I am worried. Am I losing my mind? :)

Maybe you ate a Domminos pizza for lunch?
 
NSW has been stuffed since the introduction of GST which reduced its share of tax.

The state under either party will not be able to provide proper support for its consintuents until it recieves the full proportion of GST.

Dan, how much cheaper is Fuel up north since we here are paying for it. Thankfully you are one NSW taxpayer who gets value for his money
 
Fluffy link said:
Dan, how much cheaper is Fuel up north since we here are paying for it. Thankfully you are one NSW taxpayer who gets value for his money
They don;t have an 8c State tax up there that we "enjoy" down here.  Normally the petrol companies gobble around 25% of that, but 6c would be an average I'd say.
 
More of the stuff this morning. I almost made it Disgraceful #2 but it is just more of the same issue.

Nurses to lose protection over debt
Kate Benson Medical Reporter
January 27, 2009

NURSES working the night shift at a country hospital will be told today they will no longer be escorted to their cars by a security guard or protected against violent patients unless the beleaguered health service pays its overdue bill within 24 hours.

The threat, by a Parkes security firm owed $6000, comes a day after the Herald reported staff at Mudgee Hospital were buying sausages for patients using petty cash four months after butchers, angry at being owed more than $30,000, stopped supplying meat to 15 hospitals in the area.

Nurses were buying medical supplies at pharmacies, office staff paid cash for computer supplies and lightbulbs, and toilets were blocked for weeks because bills had not been paid.

Last week Orange Base Hospital cancelled day surgery after running out of syringes, and a trucking company that transports supplies to surrounding hospitals refused to carry any more goods until its bill was settled.

The owner of Heartland Security, Lindsay Harvey, said he would threaten to withdraw his services to Parkes District Hospital today if his bill was not paid immediately. "Last year they owed me $10,000 and I couldn't pay my staff for three weeks. I was one week from shutting up shop."

The general secretary of the NSW Nurses Association, Brett Holmes, said yesterday it was "totally unacceptable" that nurses' lives would be put at risk due to unpaid bills.

"Greater Western Area Health Service has an absolute obligation to provide a safe workplace and failure to do so puts it at risk of prosecution," he said.

The Dubbo MP, Dawn Fardell, has called for the health service's administration to be sacked. She said it employed five guards to look after the Health Minister, John Della Bosca, during his visit to Bathurst hospital last week.

"We might be angry here in the country, but we are civil people. What a waste of money," she said.
 
Parkes Hospital is about to lose its security service due to the non payment of bills.  The nurses require a security escort to their car apparently, but the hospital ain't paying the bills. 
 
Disgraceful.

And this is coming from a normally pro-Labor voter. I don't go anywhere near those muppets regarding the state. Anyone who has John Della Bosca on their payroll would have Freud scratching his head.


Tbh, Gosford isn't that much better - From memory it is definitely up there with the worst in the state. I'm thankful I've never been seriously ill *knock wood*.
 
More of the same today. This is an edited version of some of the NSW Health's 'highlights':

DOCTORS at Dubbo Base Hospital have not been paid for weeks, nurses at Orange are using their own money to buy batteries for heart monitors and cake trays to dispense pills, and students in Mudgee have bought beds for the emergency department as more reports of the state's credit meltdown come to light.

But a spokesman for Nathan Rees said yesterday the Premier was "too busy with other things" to deal with the issue.

The Director-General of NSW Health, Debora Picone, refused to comment, saying the Greater Western Area Health Service "managed itself".

The area health service, which covers 56 per cent of the state, is in crisis after more reports that creditors are waiting up to six months to get paid, deliveries of food and medical supplies to hospitals have been cancelled and vital maintenance work, such as fixing blocked pipes and faulty lifts, is not being carried out.

About 12 creditors came forward yesterday, including one owed more than $16,000 for delivering fruit to remote hospitals and a nurse who was angry that several wards at Orange Base Hospital had been without paper towels, vital for infection control, for several weeks because unpaid suppliers had stopped deliveries

Students from Mudgee High School ran car washes, charity balls and raffles to raise $20,000 for emergency department beds last year. "It's a bit of a shame really that in a country like ours, as rich as ours, that our Government's health system has to rely upon local community donations to keep the hospital running," the former school captain, Hannah Kempton, said.

Three emergency trolleys were bought by the hospital's auxiliary last week after it raised more than $15,000 in raffles, while a football team paid for carpet in the maternity ward.

"It would be nice if we didn't have to buy these things, but we do," the president of the auxiliary, Glenys Goodfellow, said.
 
Do we want to add Bathursts new white elephant formerly known as its hospital?

its so bad up there that my wife and I are driving to Orange for our kid to be born, to quote our GP "you're mad if you go here, its a ****fight up there"
 
The new hospital in Bathurst is one of the great farces. I can't believe just how badly it has been designed. I have been told that the perfectly good old building is slated for demolition rather than having parts converted for use such as half-way accomodation, etc.
 
Whilst I was at CSU Bathurst a mate of mine came down crook as, can't remember whether he visisted a GP or the Hospital. But after blood tests and several consultations, the Dr said he had no idea what was wrong and left it at that.


There's no doubt that something is severly wrong with WNSW health.
 

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