Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: When nurse Amanda Duncan walked into Parliament House in Tasmania
Speaker 1: last year. She was supposed to be giving evidence about
Speaker 1: ambulance ramping, but what she actually spoke about was something
Speaker 1: completely different and far more shocking. She claimed hospital management
Speaker 1: had been altering death certificates, meaning deaths that should have
Speaker 1: been investigated were quietly re certified. Those revelations triggered a
Speaker 1: public inquiry, but questions have been raised about its scope
Speaker 1: and accountability as new cases emerged that extend far beyond
Speaker 1: the initial inquiry, including to other hospitals. Today writer and
Speaker 1: former editor of the monthly Nickpike on his investigation into
Speaker 1: falsified death certificates and revelations of a broken health system.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, March thirteen. So, Nick, you've been looking into
Speaker 1: the Tasmanian health system and it seems like there are
Speaker 1: some things that have been going seriously wrong there over
Speaker 1: a long period of time. So to start with, tell
Speaker 1: me about where this particular story begins.
Speaker 2: So this one begins when nurse Amanda Duncan, a long
Speaker 2: sistem nurse, speaks at a public inquiry. So last year
Speaker 2: she appears at a public inquiry into ambulance ramping and
Speaker 2: under parliamentary privilege, she drops a bombshell.
Speaker 3: I have received eleven reports from doctors and nurses who
Speaker 3: have disclosed alleged misconduct relating to the death of a patient,
Speaker 3: including falsified medical certificates of debt.
Speaker 2: So the way that it should work is that all
Speaker 2: reportable deaths that occur in hospitals, those relating to medical procedures,
Speaker 2: treatment or lack of must be referred to the coroner.
Speaker 2: And this is supposed to provide a check on medical malpractice,
Speaker 2: to ensure that families know that their loved ones' deaths
Speaker 2: are being accurately recorded and they find out whether or not,
Speaker 2: you know, it was preventable and what could be learnt
Speaker 2: from it. And you know, the documentation around patient deaths.
Speaker 2: It affects insurance claims, negligence claims, malpractice, worker liability and registration.
Speaker 2: It also affects hospital performance numbers, and you know, indirectly
Speaker 2: health and government finances. So the false reporting of deaths,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a criminal offense to potentially avoid this
Speaker 2: kind of scrutiny, and that's what appeared to be happening.
Speaker 2: At least eleven cases were raised by Amanda Duncan that
Speaker 2: avoided coronial investigation, and then her testimony led to an
Speaker 2: independent inquiry.
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell me more about that independent inquiry. What
Speaker 1: did it find?
Speaker 2: Essentially, it found that we were looking at an even
Speaker 2: bigger scale. So the inquiry was led by a professor,
Speaker 2: a junct professor, Deborah Pconne, and soon I'd identified a
Speaker 2: further sixty three cases of interest. He was investigating irregular
Speaker 2: practices in death reporting at this particular hospital, on cessin
Speaker 2: general hospital, and concerning a particular former staff member.
Speaker 4: Doctor Peter Renshaw is at the center of these allegations.
Speaker 4: He was the executive director of medical services at the
Speaker 4: hospital for almost three decades.
Speaker 2: He's been reluctant to speak publicly, but he has issued
Speaker 2: a statement he denies all allegations of wrongdoing.
Speaker 4: He responded in an email saying I deny absolutely and
Speaker 4: categorically any wrongdoing breach of the law or policy in
Speaker 4: relation to either the reporting of matters to the coroner
Speaker 4: or the completion of medical certificates of death.
Speaker 2: And ultimately, the review examined eighty six medical records and
Speaker 2: its findings which were released in June last year, were
Speaker 2: incredibly damning. The review referred twenty nine new cases to
Speaker 2: the coroner for investigation and found twenty eight to have
Speaker 2: inaccurate documentation. It found the former staff member had engaged
Speaker 2: in a repeated pattern of acting outside the scope of
Speaker 2: the law. So it raised terrible questions. And this is
Speaker 2: bearing in mind just looking at two years of the
Speaker 2: Loncestern Hospital records over the twenty that this staff member
Speaker 2: had been involved, and it was only looking at lon Ceston,
Speaker 2: not more broadly. But it's still the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we're looking at dozens of cases of deaths
Speaker 1: allegedly not being reported to the coroner when they should
Speaker 1: have been, which I feel like I should underline, as
Speaker 1: you say, that is a criminal offense. So what happened
Speaker 1: then once this inquiry made those facts public? What did
Speaker 1: the Health Department do? What did the Justice Department do?
Speaker 1: What did police do?
Speaker 2: So the short answer is not much. The government response
Speaker 2: has been tempered at best. They promise to improve their
Speaker 2: processes around death reporting. The police, having earlier told Amanda
Speaker 2: Duncan that they weren't going to launch an investigation, amazingly
Speaker 2: found that they didn't have sufficient evidence to press charges.
Speaker 2: The Coroner's office, who had been pegged by the Independent
Speaker 2: Inquiry for being involved in the non referral of some
Speaker 2: of the cases, had refused to speak to the PECNE review,
Speaker 2: and weirdly, the Health Secretary told Parliament that they'd literally
Speaker 2: be manually pulling files off a shelf in a randomized process. Now, unsurprisingly,
Speaker 2: this process hasn't led to any further findings, any further reports,
Speaker 2: so in some respects, all the whistleblowers and a lot
Speaker 2: of families are still hanging. The new investigations that I've
Speaker 2: been doing indicate not only did the PERCNE review look
Speaker 2: at a very very small subset of the cases that
Speaker 2: the government should know about, the cases stretched beyond Luneston
Speaker 2: General Hospital. The Health Department is still refusing to publicly
Speaker 2: acknowledge that there might be other hospitals involved, but I'm
Speaker 2: aware of staff from at least four other hospitals reporting
Speaker 2: to the Health Department about incorrect documentation of deaths, failures
Speaker 2: to send reportable cases to the coroner, improper input into
Speaker 2: the death reporting processes by the LGH management. I've heard
Speaker 2: of cases with someone from a regional hospital finding that
Speaker 2: there was a second death certificate issued for a patient.
Speaker 2: Two death certificates for the same person in the system.
Speaker 2: New accounts and allegations are emerging weekly. They stretch back
Speaker 2: in time further and they involve the current hospital management.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, who is responsible?
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Speaker 1: Nick, You've been looking into the deaths of dozens of
Speaker 1: people in hospitals in Tasmania who should have had their
Speaker 1: cause of death probably investigated, but didn't. So tell me
Speaker 1: when you started digging into this, what did you find?
Speaker 2: I mean, I'd like to just give you one example
Speaker 2: of one case and the effect have on someone's life.
Speaker 2: So I spoke to a woman called Tris Davis, whose partner,
Speaker 2: Graham Davis, he was admitted into Lonceeston General Hospital for
Speaker 2: elective surgery in twenty eighteen. So following his procedure, he
Speaker 2: had a wound that became infected and it was mistreated
Speaker 2: such that he wasn't given antibiotics for a week. He
Speaker 2: died in the Lonceston hospital, but his death wasn't reported
Speaker 2: to the coroner. Tris Davis, who was suddenly a widow,
Speaker 2: contacted the hospital and she suspected mistreatment or the misreporting
Speaker 2: of her husband's death.
Speaker 1: So she thought that the symptoms that had had while
Speaker 1: in hospital didn't match the cause of death exactly.
Speaker 2: She tried to get it referred to the coroner. She
Speaker 2: was knocked back several times. She went to the Health
Speaker 2: Complaints Commissioner. Eventually the coroner did agree to look at it,
Speaker 2: and sure enough found that the cause of death was
Speaker 2: not a pulmonary embolism as it originally been put on
Speaker 2: death certificate. He died of sepsis, So this really was
Speaker 2: a case of mistreatment in the hospital. Now, the death
Speaker 2: of her husband, she's been working to find out what
Speaker 2: happened for six years, and she had two incorrect death certificates.
Speaker 2: Her whole life has been turned upside down by this case.
Speaker 2: This is one case, So what.
Speaker 1: Is actually going on here? Is this incompetence in hospitals?
Speaker 1: Is it malpractice that is being covered up? I know
Speaker 1: that each case would have its ow nuances, but how
Speaker 1: is it possible that this is happening on a systemic level.
Speaker 2: I think there's a cultural problem that has developed over years.
Speaker 2: The Lonceston General Hospital has had resource issues for years.
Speaker 2: It's had emergency department kind of waiting lists and ramping
Speaker 2: issues for years, and I think over time the hospital
Speaker 2: management basically decided that some cases would be easier just
Speaker 2: to sweep under the carpet than to have fully investigated.
Speaker 1: And has there been any accountability at all in terms
Speaker 1: of senior hospital stuff.
Speaker 2: So the former head of the hospital has had his
Speaker 2: pro registration suspended, but there's been no explanation as to
Speaker 2: why the registration was suspended. He was cited for misconduct
Speaker 2: in relation to an earlier issue that I reported on
Speaker 2: as well to do with a pedophile who was working
Speaker 2: as a nurse in the pediatric unit at Lonceston General
Speaker 2: Hospital for nineteen years. So under the same management, we
Speaker 2: don't know which of the reasons is behind the cancelation
Speaker 2: of his registration. But what we do know is that
Speaker 2: there hasn't been any police charges, no detailed police investigations,
Speaker 2: very little reaction at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, I wanted to kind of ask you, I suppose
Speaker 1: about accountability here because it seems like what's happening is
Speaker 1: obviously this huge breach of trust. People are going to
Speaker 1: a hospital, their relatives are going in, They're not getting
Speaker 1: the right information about what's actually happened to them while
Speaker 1: they've been in the hospital's care. And then on top
Speaker 1: of it, there is this kind of sense of evasion
Speaker 1: of people having to wait years and pursue things on
Speaker 1: their own, using their own time, their own money, in
Speaker 1: order to get any answers, and it seems like there
Speaker 1: is no one from hospital management up to government departments
Speaker 1: to police who want to take responsibility or to pursue
Speaker 1: this any further. So I suppose my questions are, firstly,
Speaker 1: why do you think that is? And secondly, what is
Speaker 1: the effect of that.
Speaker 2: The effect is a general lack of trust in the
Speaker 2: health system, unfortunately, and it's devastating for people in Northern
Speaker 2: Tasmania to feel that the health system might not be transparent.
Speaker 2: The idea that you might not be able to trust
Speaker 2: what you're being told by your doctor. For years, these
Speaker 2: rumors had been flying around among doctors and nurses at
Speaker 2: the Lonceston General Hospital. And really it was the bravery
Speaker 2: of Amanda Duncan to front up to a parliamentary inquiry
Speaker 2: and say I've got these reports, I can provide this evidence.
Speaker 2: But you know, to watch for six months after she
Speaker 2: fronts up to this parliamentary inquiry, to watch it just
Speaker 2: be covered up again. To have an inquiry called that
Speaker 2: would only look into a fraction of what the problem is,
Speaker 2: it seemed like a deliberate active evasion to me, not accountability.
Speaker 2: Calling an inquiry seems to now be a way of
Speaker 2: kicking the can down the road. So you announced terms
Speaker 2: of reference that will only look at a fraction of
Speaker 2: what the problem is. It takes six months, You then
Speaker 2: agree to implement the recommendations, and then they don't get
Speaker 2: implemented and years later you still have the same problems.
Speaker 2: And you know, one more thing I would add is
Speaker 2: that if something like this had happened at the Alfred
Speaker 2: Hospital or Saint Vincent's in Melbourne, or you know, the
Speaker 2: biggest hospital in Sydney, we'd be talking about this nationally
Speaker 2: for months, and yet because it happens in Tasmania, it
Speaker 2: doesn't get any national reporting. There's twenty nine cases just
Speaker 2: from a desktop review that should have been reported to
Speaker 2: the coroner. This is twenty nine families who don't know
Speaker 2: how their loved ones died. It goes way beyond just
Speaker 2: some paperwork problems. It's not just maladministration. This is a
Speaker 2: serious systemic problem. Anything could have happened.
Speaker 1: Nick, Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 5: Thanks very much.
Speaker 1: Ruby. You can read more of Nick Quick's investigation in
Speaker 1: this weekend's edition of The Saturday Paper at the Saturday
Speaker 1: Paper dot com dot au. Also in the news today,
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Anthony Alberanzi has ruled out imposing reciprocal tariffs
Speaker 1: on the United States in retaliation against the Trump administration's
Speaker 1: twenty five percent tariffs on steel and aluminum, which came
Speaker 1: into effect overnight. Anthony Alberzi says his government will continue
Speaker 1: to advocate for trade with the United States at every level,
Speaker 1: through every channel, and the discussions with the Trump administration
Speaker 1: are ongoing. And it appears President Trump has attempted to
Speaker 1: boost the sales of his biggest political donor, Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: in a doorstop held in front of the White House yesterday,
Speaker 1: with Elon Musk by his side and a sheet of
Speaker 1: paper in his hand clearly listing the cost of teslavehicle.
Speaker 1: Trump told the media he personally will be buying a
Speaker 1: new Tesla, before getting into one of the vehicles and
Speaker 1: pretending to drive it. The sales pitch came after Tesla
Speaker 1: stock plunged more than fifteen percent in one of the
Speaker 1: company's worst trading days since it went public in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Let's see tomorrow.