An “alternative” health practice and its clinical director have been fined a combined total of nearly $727,000 following the death of a customer in 2016.
Former chiropractor Malcolm Hooper, 61, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy provider Oxymed Pty Ltd were sentenced in the Melbourne County Court on Monday.
They were each convicted of three work safety-related charges, all of failing to ensure a workplace is safe and without risks to health. Hooper was fined $176, 750, while the company was fined $550,000.
Oxymed was trading as HyperMed at its South Yarra premises in April 2016 when a long-term client with multiple sclerosis, MS-induced epilepsy and a history of life-threatening seizures came in for treatment.
He was later found unconscious in a single person hyperbaric chamber. The client was taken to hospital and placed on life support, but died five days later.
The County Court heard that both the company and Hooper had an inadequate system in place for assessing the risks oxygen therapy could pose to clients, and an inadequate system too for developing plans to eliminate or reduce those risks.
In her judgment, County Court judge Amanda Fox said HyperMed wasn’t a hospital nor a medical practice, and had been described as an “alternative health facility”.
The court heard attendants weren’t recently instructed and trained on administering effective first aid, and there was insufficient supervision of people receiving treatment.
Hooper was deregistered by the national board for chiropractors in 2013 for misleading and deceptive advertising about the benefits of hyperbaric treatment.
WorkSafe acting health and safety executive director Andrew Keen said the case was a tragic example of what could happen when employers don’t put safety first.
“If you are running a business in Victoria, you have a responsibility to ensure the health and safety of not only your workers, but also members of the public, including your customers,” Mr Keen said.
“WorkSafe will not hesitate to take action against employers who put people’s lives in danger by not having basic safety procedures in place.”
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves administering pure oxygen in a pressurised environment, with the heightened air pressure allowing a patients lungs to gather much more oxygen than would be possible under normal conditions.
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Cassandra Morgan is a breaking news reporter at The Age.
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2021-08-09 12:02:39Z
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