THE rogue obstetrician Graeme Reeves has said he felt obliged to work illegally at two South Coast hospitals because they desperately needed his help and he "felt, in all conscience that I couldn't stand back and watch disaster after disaster after disaster happen".

Mr Reeves, who is being investigated over allegations of sexual assault and botched procedures upon several women at Bega and Pambula hospitals, claimed the "standard of care had improved in my presence, not become worse".

The startling statements were made in evidence he gave to the Garling health inquiry in May, only released publicly on Thursday.

"They [the hospitals] didn't have it under control. It was very poor, in fact. And as a consequence of my actions, the GP obstetricians said, in fact, the prenatal mortality and morbidity was better while I was there than it was before," Mr Reeves said.

However, in the same evidence, Mr Reeves admitted he was guilty of shocking cases of patient neglect at several Sydney hospitals before coming to Bega and Pambula, including complaints involving two deaths, which had led to his ban from obstetrics in 1997.

Despite the ban, he was hired by the Greater Southern Area Health Service in April 2002, because health department officials failed to run adequate background checks.

Mr Reeves was referred on Thursday to the Director of Public Prosecutions for possible criminal charges for lying his way into the job. He illegally provided 32 obstetric services while at Bega and Pambula, 11 of which were emergencies.

Mr Reeves told the Garling inquiry that he accepted the findings of a Medical Board hearing in 1997, which included that two of his patients suffered unnecessarily because he did not give them enough painkilling medication, that he had been extremely aggressive towards a patient and that another patient may have died due to his poor care.

The barrister Terence Tobin, QC, assisting the inquiry, put to Mr Reeves: "You had administered grossly inadequate analgesia resulting in unnecessary suffering to the patient … And you accepted that finding, did you?"