Healthy hospital staff posed as ‘fake’ patients for Victorian minister’s visit, investigation confirms
Staff members at a regional hospital posed as “fake patients” to make their urgent care clinic appear busier during a visit by the Victorian health minister last year, an investigation has found.
The health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas on Wednesday told reporters an investigation into her visit to Colac area health’s urgent care clinic on 9 August 2023, had been completed and the staff would not be sanctioned.
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“It has confirmed that staff at Colac area health posed as patients during my visit on that day,” she said.
“These staff members were registered as patients in the urgent care centre registration system. Their registrations were later cancelled after I had left.”
Thomas said the deception included a staff member arriving to the clinic by ambulance.
“We do know that at least one person who did not require medical treatment arrived at the hospital in an ambulance. We also know that one person who was a staff member was on a trolley,” she said.
Thomas said the group had been enlisted “by some management staff to help the urgent care centre appear busier than it actually was”.
“I’m very disappointed,” she said. “I don’t need our health services to be staging fake patients to need to know that our health system is facing challenges.”
Thomas said she could not remember “anything was untoward” during the visit.
“It’s certainly not something that ever crossed my mind that a health service would work to deceive a government minister in such a way,” she said.
The investigation, commissioned by the health department and conducted by Wise Workplace Solutions, was launched after reporting by the Colac Herald.
Thomas would not release the report on Wednesday, citing privacy concerns, but provided an executive summary.
It confirmed 10 staff members working in other parts of the hospital had attended the clinic and sat in the waiting room during the visit. Arrangements were also made for one staff member to arrive by ambulance, who was then triaged by staff in the urgent care clinic.
Another “occupied a trolley in the back corridor”, it said.
The investigation said the evidence did not suggest that any resources had been diverted away from the care of genuine patients at the time but there was a “real possibility that patient care could have been impacted by the presence of patients who were not in genuine need”.
Wise Workplace Solutions and the department both took the view the incidents were inappropriate and did not align with the department’s expectations under both Colac area health or the public sector’s codes of conduct.
But the investigation did not recommended disciplining the staff