Friday, 28 August 2026

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (15:56): (2770) My adjournment this afternoon is for the attention of the Minister for Health, and it relates to sentinel events. The government continues to operate with an astounding level of secrecy. This week we learned of the depths they will go to, with their secret tax on the Suburban Rail Loop – an appalling tax on every Victorian commuter, who did not even know it existed, and which was being hidden by senior members of the Allan, Andrews and now Carroll government, and no more so than by the Premier himself, who was the Minister for Public Transport back in 2021 when it came into existence. Victorians really do deserve to know what is going on, whether it is exposing the outright issues around these secret taxes or what is happening in our health system. In relation to sentinel events, I want to understand what is being done to address the gaps in data that compromise the timely delivery of high-quality care for Victorian patients.

I am going to just refer to a terrible incident. As reported recently, Debra Buchanan was admitted to the Joan Kirner Women’s and Children’s Hospital for a routine surgical procedure to remove a cancerous skin tag. On waking she was haemorrhaging, and she learned that a large part of her external genitalia had been removed. She has been left permanently disfigured as a result of having the wrong operation performed on her after the hospital mixed her up with another patient with the same first name. This is a terrible story, an extreme example of a shocking mishap event in our hospitals. Nevertheless it highlights the issue around sentinel events and why we must understand what is going on so we can prevent another issue like this from occurring again. The most recent sentinel event annual report from Safer Care Victoria, which was set up after the taskforce that was undertaken back in 2016 to look at all these issues, was for the financial year 2023–24 and was released on 6 June 2025. At that time there were 193 sentinel events recorded for the year 2023–24. As I said, Premier Ben Carroll has vowed to deliver transparency and accountability, but quite seriously you cannot believe anything he says given what we have just seen on display this week. The action I seek is that the government release this important data in the sentinel events annual report 2024–25, because Victorians deserve to have confidence in our health system.