Reflections on the Bundaberg Hospital failure

Present-day public hospitals are often lacking in humanity, costing more and doing less, and run by executive staff with minimal clinical knowledge

The current obsession with finding and punishing “Dr Death”, as Patel has been called, instead of dealing with the system that sponsored him, seems likely to ensure that, when the dust has settled, the status quo will prevail. The Bundaberg Hospital scandal is a symptom, and more attention needs to be paid to the underlying causes. Work is performed within systems and its quality is determined by the quality of those systems. People generally do what the system requires. With all the media mayhem, we should not forget that many able people work for organisations like Queensland Health.