00:01A car crash that left two women dead and a public stabbing that killed a man and left
00:07two others fighting for their lives.
00:09In both cases, the accused men were patients at Cumberland Hospital and had absconded within
00:1424 hours of each other.
00:16We are certainly seeing some of the terrible things that could happen in a system that
00:21doesn't look after itself and doesn't look after the people who rely on it.
00:25Dr Anuradha Kataria is a former employee at Cumberland Hospital, the largest mental health
00:30facility in the country, working there for 23 years before she resigned during last year's
00:36wage dispute.
00:37She says she doesn't recall a time when patients who escaped posed the same risk to the public.
00:42The fact that it's happened twice within the same week, certainly patients from the same
00:45hospital is a complete outlier.
00:48They're being investigated to determine exactly what the circumstances were, also what can
00:54be done to prevent an incident like this happening again.
00:57According to NSW Health, patients staying at the hospital are absconding at a higher rate
01:02than other mental health units.
01:04The state average for this financial year has seen one person abscond for every 4,300 days,
01:10whereas at Cumberland Hospital it's every 1,300 days.
01:14The hospital's transfer rate, however, is fractionally better than average.
01:18That data's really concerning and it highlights to me that there is clearly an issue specifically
01:23at the Cumberland Hospital site.
01:26We would be better able to manage, better able to behaviourally de-escalate, communicate
01:31and attend to our patients' needs if we were provided with adequate ratios.
01:36Dr Kataria says shrinking budgets have seen welfare programs cut.
01:40We are taking the highest risk of patients and clumping them together in a small space with
01:44not a lot to do.
01:45The largest mental health facility in the country trying to treat the most vulnerable.
01:53of these drugs in particular there are no issues such as the whole issue of the doctor.
01:54We have to rescue those with legal adults to support us.
01:54We are talking about the health facility, but we can start breathing in the medical side.
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