One of our readers claims that he sent the following complaint to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission about A/Prof. Timothy Tan, Cardiologist on 19 Oct. 2018:-
This response was received from a Ms Catarina Soares on 5 Nov. 2018:-
We are constantly getting reports from readers complaining that, although on it’s own figures, the HCCC gets 200 complaints a month about NSW doctors, it never finds that more than 1 or 2 a month have done not a very good job, with perhaps another 1 or 2 more being found guilty of abuse to do with sex or drugs – the other nearly 200 being told that they were stupid for complaining because they had nothing to complain about. That they are pure geniuses at coming up with excuses, with, as a result, NSW doctors knowing that that can almost get away with murder, literally!
So what happened in this particular case?
Our reader got this in an email on 16 Jan. 2019.
In other words:-
Firstly, you have no basis to complain, it’s all your fault – he “provided you with appropriate care and treatment,” even though he was too lazy and negligent to ask what medication you were already on, as he told you not to rely on his advice in any way but to hotfoot it to your regular cardiologist for proper advice as soon as you could, “upon leaving the Hospital!!!”
Secondly, “At no point during your presentation did Dr Tan inform you to contact him for further advice.” What does it even mean??? The email that was sent didn’t seek “further advice,” it was sent to give him the opportunity to make up for his laziness and negligence in the advice he had given!!!
In relation to the ordinary email address our reader used, when he responded to Ms Soares’ enquiry telling her he’d used the email address on the Sydney University’s website – tim.tan@sydney.edu.au – she told him it was no wonder he hadn’t got it, that he should have used the one available from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. But when he emailed the people at AHPRA they told him they didn’t have an ordinary email address for Dr Tan, and that they had no idea what Ms Soares was talking about!!!
He says that when he then emailed Ms Soares about this, with a copy to Commissioner Sue Dawson herself, neither of them even acknowledged his email – of course!
(We’ve learnt the hard way that if you’ve sent an email to someone and haven’t got even an acknowledgement it’s receipt within 14 days, that, if it ever becomes relevant, they’ll swear until they’re black and blue in the face that they never got it, ALWAYS.)
Sue Dawson was made Commissioner in Dec. 2015, and, in our experience the level of competence in complaint handling under her shown in this matter is entirely typical – she’s useless, not a suitable person to hold her position, and if Premier Berejiklian, who’s been in charge since Jan. 2017, thinks she is, perhaps she’s not a suitable person to hold her position. But perhaps we’ll get a response from the Premier – although we doubt it.
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