I recently received a response to an emailed complaint from the Office of the Director General.
As the matters do relate to health service matters and according to the disclaimer I am unable to forwardthis response or any part of it to you - one of the relevant portionsof the disclaimer states: "may be subject to a statutory duty of confidentiality if it relates to health service matters" ... "confidentiality is not waived or lost" etc.
The response was in reply to emails which contained in part the information found
hereThe response of the Officeof the Director General mentions that it had forwarded the informationto the CMC for assessment. It went on to say that the information waspassed on the the Queensland Health Ethical Standards Unit for theiraction; they also acknowledge the allegations and says that the ESU(Ethical Standards Unit) obtained a copy of my records from theToowoomba Health Service District and noted that these were reviewed bythe Mental Health Review Tribunal.
The email went on to say that the Mental Health Review Tribunalfound no issues in regards the use of the the Mental Health Act 2000, afurther review by the ESU staff failed to find any concerns in regardsthe use of the Act. The Office of the Director General makes note thatthe allegations were broadly based and without any specific detail andthey were therefore not capable of conducting a productiveinvestigation, the email went on to provide contact details should Ilike to make a complaint against a specific psychiatrist and advisedthat the CMC had themselves been advised by the ESU that the ESU hasnow closed my file and will not be taking any further action.
The email carried the names of :
Yvonne Prince
Principal Investigator
Ethical Standards Unit
Office of the Director General
and
Ron Potts
Team Leader
Southern Area Investigations
Ethical Standards Unit
Office of the Director General
as well as the disclaimer at the bottom of this email.
Nowthis caused a few questions for me, one of the first few being whywould they provide me with contact details of how to complain inregards a psychiatrist when they had conducted a review and found asthey did - perhaps it may be because the Act does not specificallycarry legislation against medical malpractice as my claim asserts, whytherefore would it be of benefit for me to pursue what they havedescribed as being so broadly based and unfounded that it did notwarrant further investigation and effectively offer a course forresolution - most odd and unconventional indeed.
It seemed a little surprising that I had not been contacted by anymember of the CMC, ESU, MHRT or Office of the Director General toprovide personal statements or expert witness statements from qualifiedhealth professionals as mentioned in the above link and in othercorrespondence and complaints lodged. It was also unusual to say theleast that the review was carried out by a part of the body againstwhom I complained - a very starnge set of circumstances in the light ofaccountability and transparency and does go to providing cause as thethe findings of Mr David Solomon, who reviewed Freedom of Informationlaws for the Bligh Government (see link above or
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23969595-3102,00.html) and of the cases he investigated he found that " less than half werejustified" and Dr Solomon's review went on to also criticise the lackof informaton available topeople subject to an order, saying it was unfair for someone deprivedof their liberty not to be told what was alleged about them. QueenslandJustices Association (QJA) president Bob Pilkington supported a reviewof this situation.
Oneis left to wonder if the Principal Investigator of the EthicalStandards Unit and the Team Leader of the Southern Area Investigationsof the Ethical Standards Unit along with the Office of the DirectorGeneral are aware of these findings and their implications. I f theyare as they should be one would then have to consider as a part oftheir deliberations if these bodies may have an agenda that is otherthan the investigating and finding of the facts and leaves one tospeculate as to what that agenda may be and as to where it may springfrom or does one simply make the assumption that the facts are not ofimportance or of relevance when the complaints include references tosexual abuse by Catholic priests - one would hope that is not the case,however even Prime Ministers are capable of such oversights and itwould not take a great deal of imagination to see that perhaps asimilar process may be at work here.
