Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Moreton on this motion. It's true that the additional PBS listings announced in last year's budget do develop and deliver more affordable options for contraception and for the treatment of menopause and endometriosis. These listings represent real gains for Australian women and girls. But, while these reforms mark genuine progress, we still have a long way to go before we ensure that all women receive safe gynaecological care in this country.

Endometriosis affects about one in seven Australian girls, women and those assigned female at birth. It's a debilitating condition which can cause chronic pain and infertility. Endometriosis can be hard to diagnose and hard to treat. Symptoms can overlap with other conditions. Sometimes, surgery is required for diagnosis. Women living with endometriosis, like all patients across Australia, deserve best practice evidence-based care.

Mr Simon Gordon was, until recently, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at Epworth Freemasons, the largest private hospital in Victoria. It's recently been alleged that Mr Gordon performed aggressive and unnecessary laparoscopic surgeries in which he removed tissue and even internal organs from a number of women with suspected endometriosis. Laparoscopic surgeries for severe endometriosis attract the highest Medicare rebate for this condition, under MBS item 35641. It's alleged that, for each of these operations, Mr Gordon received up to a $1,449 rebate but that he also billed tens of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket fees paid by vulnerable women.

Some women reported being forced to access their superannuation early or to take out personal loans to pay for procedures which left them with permanent pelvic scarring. Further, it's alleged that some women were rendered infertile unnecessarily, even criminally, by a surgeon that they had trusted—a man in whose hands they'd placed themselves at their time of greatest vulnerability.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' guidelines advise caution before undertaking repeated surgery for endometriosis, but Mr Gordon allegedly undertook such surgery as many as seven times on one of these patients. That should have rung alarm bells through excessive billing for specific item numbers either through the federal government's Medicare compliance measures or through the Epworth hospital's internal audits. But, instead, the allegations against Mr Gordon suggest a distressing failure of clinical oversight, system protections and regulatory responsibility over some years.

It's a matter of public record that numerous complaints about Mr Gordon's practices were made over a number of years to multiple administrators, from the Epworth hospital to the healthcare regulator Ahpra and to the Victorian Healthcare Complaints Commissioner—complaints made by patients and by his peers. It's inexplicable that this number of complaints did not trigger more effective reviews of his practice.

In response to this case, Ahpra has now launched a major external review into its clinical governance. Safer Care Victoria will engage with that inquiry. An inquiry will be undertaken by the Epworth hospital, and the Victorian government has also referred Mr Gordon to the police. But the state government has not signalled any intention to undertake its own investigation. Given the previous failure of the Epworth hospital to act on multiple complaints over several years, it's confounding that the Allan state government is allowing that private hospital to self-investigate its role in this tragedy.

The allegations I've detailed have understandably caused great consternation and distress in a very vulnerable patient group which is now unsure whether or not it can trust its doctors. Mr Gordon's case should represent a canary-in-the-coalmine moment. It should prompt a review of regulatory oversight in our private hospitals, it should prompt a review of Medicare billing compliance measures and it should prompt a review of the national health care regulatory authority. Until we strengthen accountability, regulation and transparency in our healthcare system, our system will continue to fail Australians, and it will fail vulnerable women.

See this speech in context