Queensland Health
From Freepedia
Queensland Health is the department of the Government of Queensland responsible for operating and administering the public health system of the Australian State of Queensland. It is responsible to the State's Minister for Health Stephen Robertson and its Director-General is Dr Steve Buckland.
Queensland Health is divided up into 38 "health districts", each district usually centred upon a major hospital or regional centre. Queensland Health has approximately 65,000 employees across the state.
In the mid-1940s Queensland was the first state in Australia to introduce free and universal public hospital treatment, a policy that some other states followed.
In 2005 Queensland Health came under much criticism about its perceived top-heavy bureaucratic structure and its inaction in the face of allegations of gross clinical incompetence by the former Bundaberg Base Hospital surgical director Dr Jayant Patel. As a result, Queensland Health is undergoing a thorough administrative review into the practices of its administrative officials and is also being scrutinised by a public Commission of Inquiry into Dr Jayant Patel led by Tony Morris, QC. There has also been much controversy over practices at the John Tonge Centre, where autopsies mandated by the Coroner's Act are performed for the Brisbane metropolitan area.
