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There's a call for heads to roll at Wanganui Hospital after a scathing Health and Disability Commissioner's report into a former doctor whose drinking led to a trail of medical mishaps.
Slovakian-trained doctor Roman Hasil botched eight sterilisation operations leading to six pregnancies at Wanganui Hospital.
The city's mayor, Michael Laws, says the blame lies at the top and he wants the Whanganui District Health Board boss to pay.
Wanganui is a town reeling from yet another black report on it's hospital.
Laws, who is also a member of the health board, says this latest report is the last straw and the CEO must go.
"Speaking to you as the Mayor of Wanganui, if my chief executive behaved like this he would be gone. No, he wouldn't be gone, he would have resigned and taken some form of accountability," says Laws.
The Whanganui DHB Chief Executive Memo Musa, however, wants to stay put.
"There's been some good things done by this DHB and I believe
I've still got a lot to offer the community," says Musa.
But Laws, who has flown from his sick daughters Auckland hospital
bedside to deal with the fallout, says three negative reports in
the past year means it's too late for that.
"It's not good enough for a board to say 'oh well we've learned from our mistakes'. No we haven't, otherwise we wouldn't have had three of them," says Laws.
The Health and Disability Commissioner's report says had thorough background checks been made on Dr Hasil they would have revealed:
- He had made false declarations to Tasmanian health authorities by not telling them about a criminal conviction and prison term in Singapore.
- He had made a hasty exit from a New South Wales hospital for allegedly "fiddling the books".
- He had been dismissed from a hospital in Victoria for alcohol issues.
The report places the blame three ways for this. First it says the DHB did not make any verbal reference checks on him. Then the medical council slipped up too.
"They did more than others had done but there were some red flags that I suggest were not followed through," says Ron Paterson, Health and Disability Commissioner.
One red flag was that the medical council was told about Hasil's alcohol issues in Australia but failed to investigate further. The council admits it knew about the drinking.
"It was raised with us as a hypothetical situation and what we have decided is that we will not discuss situations as, in inverted commas, 'hypothetical' ," says John Campbell, medical council chairman.
A recruitment agency slipped up too, by not forwarding a negative character reference on Hasil.
The Whanganui board chair Kate Joblin met with some of the women complainants on Tuesday.
"The real acid test for me is will I bring or confidently bring my children to this hospital? And the answer to that is yes I would," says Joblin.
The DHB has apologised to the women affected by the botch ups and vowed to perform better reference checks on its doctors from now on. It also says it now carries out verbal references for every doctor it hires.
Hasil is now back in Australia.
