FOI documents released to the Canberra Liberals reveal that the Executive Director of Women, Youth and Children at Canberra Health Services (CHS) feared the Fetal Medicine Unit (FMU) at the Centenary Hospital for Women would pose, “significant patient safety and reputational risk in the first quarter of 2023".

In CHS’ Procurement Committee Request form, prepared on the 24^th of January 2023 for the purpose of contracting in services, the Executive Director of Women Youth and Children expressed her concerns for the unit in a request summary.

She said, “It is anticipated that a sustainable service will be unable to be provided in the first quarter of 2023, posing significant patient safety and reputational risk.”

The Director outlined the risks about the ability to provide a clinically safe service for women with high risk pregnancies and CHS’ reputational risk of being unable to provide a service.

Shadow Minister for Health Leanne Castley said the Health Minister, Rachel Stephen-Smith, had assured Canberrans at the end of March that the Fetal Medicine Unit was clinically safe, but that there was nothing in the documents to suggest that clinical staff had been engaged.

“It is not clear that CHS hired clinical staff in the first quarter of 2023, or until the Health Minister updated the Assembly on the 9^th of May saying that two VMO’s had only started recently,” Ms Castley said.

“The Health Minister should come clean and let Canberrans know what clinical concerns there were at the FMU between February and April, how staff exits and leave affected services and what the current situation is with regard to clinical services.

“The FOI documents also confirm there were major risks for compliance and regulation at the FMU, with training requirements and RANZCOG accreditation requirements not being able to be met.”

The documents show three visiting one-day-a-week ‘FIFO’ specialists from the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, one with Certification in Maternal Fetal Medicine and two sonologists, were not due to support ultrasound training for registrars at the hospital till the end of March.

“Overall, the FOI documents show that CHS were scrambling to ensure that the unit could continue to function and their training could be reaccredited whilst the unit was held together on a wing and a prayer in the first quarter of 2023.

“Even now, due to the Government’s lack of foresight and planning we have stopgap instead of permanent solutions to staffing and accreditation issues at FMU,” Ms Castley concluded.