Fiona Stanley Hospital a mobile dead spot
Doctors say the lives of patients are at risk because some staff cannot get mobile phone reception at Fiona Stanley Hospital.
The West Australian is aware of incidents in recent weeks where surgeons have missed calls about seriously ill patients at other hospitals because they could not get mobile reception at the state-of-the-art Murdoch campus.
One doctor said the mobile black spots were "a disaster waiting to happen" and cited calls to three doctors seeking advice about a patient's treatment going straight to message banks because they did not have mobile coverage.
Some doctors now carry cordless landline phones or tell people to contact them via the hospital's wi-fi.
It is understood the problem stems from a dispute over who is responsible for the black spot.
Optus won the contract for the hospital's telephone services but doctors using Telstra and Vodafone battle to get a signal.
It comes on top of other headaches for the hospital, including another information and communications technology outage last Sunday that crippled wireless devices, mobile duress alarms and pagers.
Staff were told to use two-way radios in place of pagers and to call the Helpdesk in the event of an emergency code black, which signals a threat to personal safety.
It was revealed yesterday that Serco had been stripped of its control of sterilising medical equipment because of delays in returning items to operating theatres.
Australian Medical Association WA president Michael Gannon said the phone issue needed to be fixed urgently.
"A doctor's mobile phone is an essential part of their life and they might be on call for patients in numerous hospitals," he said.
"There is an expectation doctors will be available to answer questions about their patients' care and in some specialties there is an expectation they will be able to attend to patients in 30 minutes."
Australian Nursing Federation State secretary Mark Olson said every second counted in health care and a phone call could be the difference between life and death. "It is dangerous that there is a breakdown of communication between medicos and patients or other staff at the State Government's new flagship hospital," he said.
Shadow health minister Roger Cook said a basic requirement of a hospital had been badly overlooked and it was unacceptable that doctors and nurses could not be contacted in potentially life-and-death situations.
A hospital spokeswoman said the site had recently increased its mobile coverage through Optus but Telstra and Vodafone needed to undertake the work required for their own service. "We understand that this is causing some inconvenience for staff and we are increasing pressure on Telstra to resolve this matter," she said.
A Telstra spokesman said its general mobile coverage in the area was good but work for the infrastructure required to provide in-building coverage at FSH was contracted to another carrier.
"Telstra has been working closely with both Fiona Stanley Hospital and the carrier to resolve any current issues around in-building coverage as quickly as possible," he said.
