Corporate Governance Failure

Running Head: CORPORATE GOVERNANCE FAILURE
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE FAILURE
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1CORPORATE GOVERNANCE FAILURE
Answer 1
There are severe breach of conduct in Bundaberg Base Hospital when in 2004 Dr Jayant
Patel was appointed as the Senior Medical Officer. In this regard, there were four specific
corporate government practice that the hospital authority had violated in the process of not only
appointing Dr Jayant Patel out of provisions but also the aftermath where the authority failed to
safeguard the patient safety and the competency of the surgeon to operate a patient (Wilkinson et
al., 2015). It is considered to be a severe allegation for the Bundaberg Base Hospital authority
especially the Acting Director of Medical Services of Bundaberg Base Hospital, Dr Nydam and
later Dr Keating (Qphci.qld.gov.au, 2005).
In this respect, the case revealed a number of important aspects regarding the hospital
budgetary system. As per the legitimate system there are two ways that the hospital budget was
trying to finance. Firstly, there had to be a surgeon with Australian specialist qualification. For
an overseas trained specialist surgeon it was also required a clearance from the Royal
Australasian College of Surgeons (McEwen & Eldridge, 2016). The second was based on the
elective surgery throughput. The reason behind choosing Dr Patel as the best option the hospital
authority was intended to set the balance because an authentic recruitment required salary that
was way generous than the Queensland Health. The District Manager Mr Leck justified that it
was impossible for a district manager to exceed budget or he would be sacked.
The next failure was identified as the negligence of both the Medical board of the
hospital and the Queensland Health to check the credentials that Dr Patel was submitted to the
committee. In reality, Dr Patel had practiced in US but on the ground of disciplinary action the
US government seized his license to practice. Even he was unemployed for a year in the States.

2CORPORATE GOVERNANCE FAILURE
Therefore, it was the responsibility of the hospital management to cross check the credentials of
Dr Patel before appointing him as a Specialist surgeon (Gibson, 2016). This negligence from
management side led to a breach in the corporate governance framework and revealed the
incompetence of Dr Patel in a tragic and fatal way through the death of a number of patients.
In addition to this, the role of the higher authority and their leverage for Dr Patel was also
under the scrutiny of violation of the Australian Governance for Safety and Quality in Health
Service Organisation. The initial breach was made by the Acting Director of Medical Service of
Bundaberg Base Hospital, Dr Nydam who reluctantly skipped the practice of evaluating and
scrutinising through peer assessment and registered and appointed Dr Patel as the Senior Medical
Officer (Happell et al., 2015). The next breach was done by Dr Keating who despite of having
the knowledge that Dr Patel’s competence and skills were yet to be evaluated replaced Dr
Nydam as Director of Medical Service. As a result of that the credibility of Dr Patel became
unchecked.
The final allegation can be made on the context of maintaining adequate complaint
system to operate. It can be stated that Mr Leck was the responsible person who should address
the complaints from the colleagues of Dr Patel and from the patients as well. The principle cause
of such negligence was the way of treating hospitals. Based on the evidences it can be stated that
both Mr Leck and Dr Keating envisaged the hospital as a business enterprise where profit and
loss was accounted more than patient safety and quality of treatment. This business mentally was
equally responsible for damaging the corporate governance framework at Bundaberg Base
Hospital.