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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-11-01 Daily Xml
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Ministerial Statement

Women's and Children's Hospital Cochlear Implant Program

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:00): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C.J. PICTON: I rise to update the house on actions taken in response to the independent governance review of the Women's and Children's Hospital cochlear implant program. The report, released on 21 August, identified systemic issues with the program dating up to 17 years in the past. All 59 recommendations were supported. At the same time, we announced a complete overhaul of the program, while also offering impacted families up-front payments and establishing supports for families to navigate potential compensation claims.

Professor Chris Baggoley, former Chief Medical Officer of Australia, is chairing the independent oversight committee overseeing the implementation of the recommendations. The committee is working to closely track the implementation of every single recommendation and will determine when each recommendation can be considered complete. Importantly, the government has appointed to the committee three consumer representatives: a parent of a child impacted by the issues with the program and two adult cochlear implant users.

The committee has outlined a plan for meetings over 12 months or until all recommendations have been satisfactorily implemented. The Women's and Children's Health Network, under the leadership of the new Interim CEO, Rebecca Graham, advise that they have implemented a number of the recommendations. These include:

establishing a new dedicated cochlear implant navigator role;

recruiting for an additional four allied health professionals to bolster the workforce;

securing the ongoing appointment of the program manager;

developing a workforce plan to strengthen permanency of staffing roles and less reliance on short-term contracts;

delivering leadership development plans for the cochlear implant clinical lead and children's audiology service manager; and

rolling out a new electronic patient booking system to ensure families are receiving the appointments that they need on time.

Importantly, the government decided to make up-front offers of ex gratia payments to assist families: $50,000 for families where the child was impacted and $5,000 for other families in the program. These payments do not waive a family's other legal rights. I can inform the house that as of last Friday, 54 ex gratia payments to families have now been made by the government: 27 payments have been made for the $50,000 amount and 27 payments for the $5,000 amount, a total figure of $1.485 million. There are a further 70 applications that have now been made, which are being assessed by Dr Lawrence and the department, with an aim to swiftly process all these applications.

Mr Speaker, you may recall a separate independent clinical review has been commissioned through interstate provider NextSense to provide individual assessments of children who have accessed the program. All participants in the program have been offered appointments with NextSense, and it is the decision of families whether to participate. I can update the house that 85 assessments have been completed to date. It is anticipated that the NextSense review will be completed by the end of next month, which will outline the fulsome picture of how many patients have been impacted.

I am pleased to inform the house that, as promised, the government has engaged an NGO, Uniting Communities, to operate a dedicated and independent Family Liaison Unit. This free service will provide support, advocacy and advice and is available to all consumers of the paediatric cochlear implant program, alongside family members and caregivers. Information about the service has been provided to families. Thirteen families are currently being supported by Uniting Communities as part of this program.

The government is also establishing a Special Purpose Family Engagement Unit to assist families with claims for compensation should they choose to make a claim on behalf of their child. Comprehensive information regarding the Special Purpose Family Engagement Unit will be provided to all families this month. It will be up to families if they wish to engage with the Family Engagement Unit about compensation or pursue their own legal action. I am advised that no legal action claims have yet started, although a number of pre-action claims have been notified. The government will be working proactively with families through this process.

The South Australian government is also putting this issue on the national agenda, together with Queensland, where there has also been a similar problem identified at Townsville hospital. A number of recommendations of our own review also had national implications. In September, all Australian health ministers agreed to task national health officials with urgent advice on actions post consideration of the South Australian and Queensland reviews, with further consideration to happen on these recommendations at the next meeting this month.

The government is fully committed to implementing every recommendation of the independent review as soon as possible, providing significant support to those impacted families and taking every possible action to ensure that an issue such as this does not happen again.

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