Public healthcare in the New England is really bad.
Not stretched. Not under pressure. Not “doing its best under difficult circumstances”. Bad. It is not possible to overstate how bad it is. People are not just inconvenienced by it, they are harmed by it. People die because of the poor state of healthcare in this region.
We all know this.
And we say it, constantly. It is discussed every day on social media, in waiting rooms, over the phone, in messages to friends, and in quiet conversations after something has gone wrong. There is no shortage of awareness, and there is certainly no shortage of anger.
But what we don’t do—what we almost never do—is formally complain.
We are culturally wired not to. Rural people get on with it. We tolerate. We put up with less, accept worse, and tell ourselves that making a fuss will not help, or might even make things harder the next time we need care. When there is only one hospital, complaining does not feel like a neutral act. It feels risky. It’s more than awkward going back to somewhere you’ve complained about, and we need to be able to go to the hospital.
So we talk about it instead.
We say, correctly, that it is not good enough. We share stories. We vent. We support each other. But very rarely do we sit down, fill out the form, write the email, or make the call that forces the system to record what has actually happened.
And that is the gap the system relies on. As long as we don’t make it formal, they can ignore us.
Because a Facebook post is not a complaint. A conversation is not a complaint. Even a widely shared story is not a complaint. If it is not formally lodged, it does not count in the way that matters.
I am as guilty of this as anyone.
I wrote opinion pieces about the bad food in Tamowrth and air conditioning being broken in Armidale, and the cost to my health of the five-day delay to get an MRI. I launched a major investigation about patient transfers after being transferred to Tamworth after that extensive delay by ambulance, only to then be told I had to make my own way back to Armidale, with the best they could manage being a lift to the train station.
I said it out loud. Repeatedly.
But last year when I was gaslit and denied care in the Armidale emergency department, after a seven hour wait with ongoing complications that were painful and genuinely frightening (and confirmed the next day by a CT the doctor couldn’t be stuffed ordering), I did something different.
I complained.
And it is important to say this: our nurses and our locally based staff are, by and large, fantastic. The nurses and admins are the ones holding this system together. It was local, permanent staff at Armidale Hospital who encouraged me to make that complaint. They handed me the form. They gave me two copies, just in case I stuffed the first one up. They clearly wrote the name of the doctor on a post-in note so I could be clear who I was complaining about. They knew it mattered.
And they were right. We need to complain. We need to stand up to the system that treats us a second class citizens and demand the effective health care we are equally entitled to.
I received a phone call as a result of my complaint from the Clinical Director of Medical Services at Armidale. I was told in no uncertain terms that the doctor I had complained about—a locum —would not be at the hospital again. I then received an email confirming the same.
That is what a formal complaint does. It forces action, or at the very least, it forces a response, and makes a record.
Except that the system is so used to lying to us, to treating us like we don’t matter, that sometimes they think they can just say what we want to hear and that’s the complaint dealt with.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend went that same emergency department with an injured child.
Same dismissive gaslighting. Same odd refusal to touch the patient, do a physical exam, and provide basic medical care. Same doctor?
So I followed it up. I asked the Clinical Director to confirm that what I had been told was true – that locum was not back at Armidale Hospital.
The response I received was: “As you might appreciate, the doctor you complained about is entitled to privacy.”
Note they didn’t say the patient’s privacy, the doctor’s privacy. In other words, yeah, it was the same bloody doctor.
But here’s the difference – because I had made the formal complaint, there was a record. Now every time that doctor is complained about, it can’t be dismissed as a first or an aberration – it’s a pattern.
The doctor is not entitled to anything, as far as I am concerned, other than an exit interview after he gets fired.
And I am entitled to honesty. We all are. And we are entitled to competent medical care from real doctors, not a cash sucking creep who doesn’t give a stuff about people. We are entitled not to be lied to by government employees.
What allows this to continue is not just staffing shortages, or an overreliance on locums that are far too often bad doctors just in it for the cash. It is also us. It is our reluctance to formally document what is happening.
Right now, there is a vast disconnect between what is happening in our community and what is formally on the record. That disconnect protects the system. It allows decision-makers in Newcastle and Sydney to minimise, to deflect, or to claim that issues are isolated when they are anything but. I have sat and listened to parliamentary hearings where the city people dismiss our concerns and say their hands are tied and its very difficult to recruit.
In the last round of health estimates hearing in the NSW Parliament last month, the Liberal Shadow Health Minister, Sarah Mitchell, didn’t even push them on it, allowing their propaganda about it being hard to recruit to stand.
It’s well past time call BS.
Our towns are great places to live. The city people are still migrating in droves, it hasn’t stopped post-covid. It isn’t really that hard to recruit, but Hunter New England Health actively discourages people from wanting to work and live here. Whether its their culture of treating rotations here as a punishment or something to be endured right from the junior doctor training on, or telling good doctors they “don’t need to go”, or making the lives of those doctors who come harder by not giving them the tools they need to do the job.
Both actively and systemically, Hunter New England Health starve our facilities of resources and hoard the doctors for themselves.
We see the consequences in substandard locum care. Locums have a place, they cover gaps, they keep services open, but they are not a substitute for permanent staff, and they are certainly not an excuse for poor care. Too often, they are exactly that.
We see the delays. We see the dismissals. We see the failures. We literally pay the price with our health.
And we talk. But we do not complain.
If we want a health system that matches the quality of our communities, we have to create pressure that cannot be ignored. That means taking the time, however uncomfortable it feels, to formally complain. To put it in writing. To make it part of the record.
Not once. Not occasionally. Every time there is a serious problem or failure to provide basic care.
Because one complaint can be brushed off. Ten can be managed. Hundreds, thousands, cannot be ignored.
Not because it feels good. Not because it is easy – it isn’t. But because it is the only way this changes. We need to drown the bureaucrats in Sydney and Newcastle with complaints until we get the high quality health care we are entitled to. Until they beg for the split of Hunter and New England health districts as we have for over a decade.
You have to complain, New England.
End rant.
How to complain to Hunter New England Health
Use the online form: https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Pages/feedback.aspx
Email: HNELHD-SRC@health.nsw.gov.au
Phone: 1800 605 172 (Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 5pm)
Post:
Strategic Relations and Communications
Locked Bag 1
New Lambton NSW 2305
How to complain to the Health Minister:
Use the online form here https://www.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/ministers/minister-for-health-minister-for-regional-health-and-minister-for-illawarra-and-south-coast
Dr RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and holds a PhD in political behaviour. She is also a well known migraine and health advocate, and the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.
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