Addressing an Australian Medical Association Political Leaders’ breakfast this morning, Premier Jay Weatherill said some local clinicians had felt disrespected during the controversial Transforming Health hospital system reform process.

However, Weatherill also accused some clinicians of putting their own interests ahead of the interests of patients in their opposition to Transforming Health.

“To the extent that local clinicians have felt disrespected then that’s a bad thing and that is something we should put our hand up for and acknowledge” said Weatherill.

“To some degree that is something the current Minister for Health (Peter Malinauskas) is acknowledging…

“There was an important meeting this week where he sat down with clinicians and talked about these issues.”

Malinauskas met with Modbury Hospital medical staff earlier this week.

Immediate past president of doctors’ union SASMOA, Lyell McEwin emergency consultant Dr David Pope told InDaily this morning that “the level of disrespect was quite palpable” during Transforming Health, a reform program that the Government says will be officially brought to an end with the closure of the Repatriation General Hospital this month.

“Doctors were raising genuine concerns, both from efficiency and patient safety points of view,” said Pope.

“The Government … chooses not to consult widely enough to ensure that the services that are delivered are safe and effective.”

He nominated the “downgrading” of some services at Modbury Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital as examples of a failure on the part of the Government to listen to clinicians.

On a panel with Liberal leader Steven Marshall and SA Best leader Nick Xenophon at the AMA health policy event this morning, Weatherill also attacked doctors who were unwilling to “cooperate” with Transforming Health.

“To the extent that people were objecting about actually moving to the Lyell McEwin (Hospital) and putting their interests ahead of the interests of patients, we do disagree with that,” Weatherill told the gathering.

He said he supported “robust criticism of people who weren’t prepared to cooperate with us” in changing hospital services so that people living in Adelaide’s northern suburbs “were actually treated in the north”.

“Why should it be the case that people in the northern suburbs aren’t treated where they live?” he said.

“Why should they be treated as second-class citizens?”

Pope told InDaily doctors were always expected to put the interests of their patients ahead of their own, and many SA doctors had done so at great personal sacrifice during the Transforming Health process.

Doctors and nurses from Modbury Hospital last year warned that the loss of 32 general medical beds to the Lyell McEwin Hospital threatened to reduce the quality of care at the former.

The loss of those beds to the LMH reportedly made room for about the same number of rehabilitation beds to be opened at Modbury, drawn from Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre.

Health Minister Peter Malinauskas told InDaily this afternoon that while he was seeking to build relationships with doctors, his first priority was patient care.

“Since being appointed to the Health portfolio, I have sought to build on relationships with key stakeholders including clinicians, but will always consider that patient care and serving the community are my number one priorities,” he said in a statement.

“I am engaged in meaningful consultations with the community and clinicians about how we can improve services provided at Modbury and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.”

He added that after intensive negotiations with SASMOA, public hospital doctors had accepted, in principle, an enterprise bargaining offer from the Government “that will benefit doctors and patients, with a commitment to improve patient flow through our emergency departments so patients can be admitted to our hospitals sooner”.