Regional Hospitals can do better

07-06-10
Catherine Henry

Regional NSW hospitals can do better, based on last quarterly performance figures.

New South Wales public hospitals have earned the shameful trophy of having the worst record for errors leading to ‘adverse outcomes’. The Productivity Commission report indicates that there were 59 ‘sentinel events’ in NSW in 2007-2008. This euphemistic descriptor refers to those events that cause serious injury or death to a patient and which are attributable to a mistake or error in the person’s treatment, regardless of their condition.

The data showed:

18 NSW procedures involving the wrong patient or body part (29 total, nationally);
19 NSW cases of medical instruments being left in patients after surgery (37 total nationally);
medication errors in NSW killing 17 patients (29 total nationally).