Dr MARJORIE O'NEILL (Coogee) (16:06:50): Today I express my deep concerns and the deep concerns of many in my community regarding the cuts to the clinical engineering department at the Prince of Wales Hospital. On 24 April this year I wrote to the Minister for Health expressing my deep concerns regarding the cuts and asking for them to be reversed. Engineers and technicians from the clinical engineering department at the Prince of Wales Hospital are responsible for ensuring that equipment, including ventilators, defibrillators and anaesthesia machines, work properly. Clinical engineering staff can also be present during many surgeries and emergency procedures to monitor the equipment being used. During heart surgery, technicians will monitor the balloon pumps used to stabilise blood pressure.
In the middle of a global health pandemic, this Government is cutting the number of staff available to perform emergency maintenance on life-saving hospital equipment. In the middle of an economic crisis, this Government is reducing the number of working hours of frontline health staff. In recent weeks I have worked closely with the Health Services Union and frontline staff from the clinical engineering department of the Prince of Wales Hospital. Staff have reported that over the past decade the pieces of essential equipment that this team is responsible for have almost quadrupled, whilst their staffing numbers have been slowly and systematically reduced. When this department had approximately 3,000 pieces of equipment to manage it had 12 staff, providing for 250 clinical machines per person. Before the most recent cuts were made, nine staff were maintaining more than 11,000 pieces of equipment—or more than 1,200 clinical machines per person.
Staff have told me that they were already struggling to keep up with their workload before those cuts were made. Now they are worried that things will fall through the cracks because of the cuts, putting patients' lives at risk. The cuts will also see the removal of the second and third on-call technical officers. In addition, it is my understanding that cuts are proposed to remove four hours a day of labour from the clinical engineering department, reducing the department's capacity to service and test equipment on time and to standard. Given that technical officers in clinical engineering are responsible for five entities—the Prince of Wales Hospital, the Sydney Children's Hospital, the Royal Hospital for Women, the Eastern Heart Clinic and Sydney Hospital—it is not unlikely that the second and third on call will be required to work, as the first on call has been booked and is working on another case.
Those staff are called in to assist with urgent heart surgery that may be required when someone, for example, is having a heart attack. In such cases their role is to monitor critical machines such as balloon pumps that help to increase the blood flow to the heart immediately before and after surgery. Limiting their capacity to deal with multiple urgent heart operations will put the lives of seriously ill people at risk. In addition to putting lives at risk, there is the issue of the cost. A second on-call technician costs roughly $40 a day, while the third on‑call technician costs roughly $7 a day. Calculated for 365 days a year, that is a cost of less than $17,000 annually. I find it remarkable and, quite honestly enraging, that our public health system is being required to penny pinch, that our frontline service providers are having their hours reduced and that the people of New South Wales are losing frontline health services whilst the New South Wales Government happily continues to rack up multimillion- and billion-dollar blowouts.
In light of the major health emergency we are currently experiencing, it is clear that we require greater investment in our health workers, not less. While it seems nonsensical to have to highlight the current situation— especially in light of the panic that surrounded Australia's supply of ventilators just two months ago—it seems that this Government needs a reminder. Every piece of life-saving equipment in a hospital needs to be maintained on schedule and to standard. If not, lives will be placed at risk. The clinical engineering department does its job and does it well, despite being understaffed, under-resourced and now undercut once again. It therefore seems completely absurd that there would be a deliberate determination to reduce the maintenance of such essential equipment. Furthermore, New South Wales is facing its worst unemployment rates since the Great Depression. Here is an opportunity to retain staff and save jobs. As representatives, it is our responsibility to take each and every opportunity to do that. These cuts are an unscrupulous decision that impacts not only frontline medical services but also patient outcomes and safety. The Government is unnecessarily placing lives at risk. The cuts should be reversed immediately.
