FAILING TO KEEP TRACK
Hospital worst in state for number of mental health patients escaping unit
MORE patients escaped from the Cairns Hospital’s mental health unit last year than anywhere else in Queensland.
Health advocates have raised serious concerns about the underfunded ward after new figures from Queensland Health revealed 133 mental health inpatients absconding from the hospital in the last financial year.
In comparison, 58 patients escaped treatment at the Gold Coast, 49 from the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane and 38 from Townsville. The statistics follow a raft of faults within the Far North’s mental health services uncovered by an independent review this year.
The review recommended constructing a new purposebuilt mental health facility with inpatient and community-based elements, a project that is likely to take up to five years to complete.
The statistics, published in the health department’s Director of Mental Health annual report, show a slight decrease in the amount of absconders from the hospital’s mental health unit from the previous year.
CHHHS chief executive Clare Douglas said the bulk of recorded absconders from the inpatient mental health unit were either on overnight or short-term approved leave and may have failed to return at the appointed time or were community patients who failed to attend appointments.
“This is recorded as ‘absent without permission’ and an authority to return is ordered,” she said.
She said the health service was reviewing its processes in mental health.
Together Union’s Cairns health representative, Dr Sandy Donald, said there was inadequate funding and accommodation for the number of patients mental health staff were required to treat.
He said the union was concerned that problems with resourcing and management had placed undue pressure upon mental health staff.
“That can’t be good for the patients,” he said.
Dulcie Bird, the Cairnsbased chief executive of the Edward Koch Foundation, said she too was deeply concerned.
“We’re writing a draft community action plan, which we will be trying to ensure that if a policy does exist to combat things like this, that there is more training given so that staff understand those policies and procedures to try and reduce those figures,” she said.