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August 28, 2007
Peter Martin in an op- ed in the Canberra Times refers to the adverse events in our hospitals, and the 1995 ‘Quality in Australian Health Care’ study:
Each year some 18,000 of us die in hospitals. By comparison, fewer than 2000 Australians die on the roads. The 18,000 deaths, six out of 10 of which were avoidable, were identified, along with 50,000 cases of permanent disability, in a landmark 1995 study that has never been repeated.
And yet we rarely hear about this. Unlike road deaths they are not publicly reported. Politicians confidently repeat that we have a good health system, whilst the media challenges this by focusing on waiting lists and hospital queues:
Neil
Martin goes on to say that ten years later in 2005, an editorial in the Medical Journal of Australia asked whether a decade on we could "confidently state that health care is safer for patients"?
It concluded:
Unfortunately, the answer is no. It is regrettable that we have not measured the frequency of adverse events in Australia in a way that allows us to assess how we have fared since 1995; how we compare with other countries; and whether any initiatives have been effective in reducing patient harm.
It is not deemed important enough to keep these kind of figures on a national level. What we have is a fundamental failure of governance by both the State and the Commonwealth governments--separately and together --- and the lack of willingness to respond appropriately at both the bureaucratic and political levels. A curtain is being pulled over adverse events.
Professor Jeff Richardson, the foundation director of the Monash Centre for Health Economics, says that an estimated 50 Australians die in hospitals every day. Another 140 are permanently injured. Richardson describes the reported rate of preventable deaths in hospitals as "equivalent to a Bali bombing every three days". He adds that we are probably justified in thinking about those deaths in the same way as we would a casualty rate in a war.
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Gary,
I followed the link to the Monash Centre for Health Economics' report on adverse events in our hospitals and quickly scanned it. It is stated that:
It adds that subsequent studies have confirmed the existence of a major problem and that the response to what might justifiably be described as a crisis in
Australian hospitals has been cautious and incremental.
This is awful---50 Australians dying daily and another 140 sustaining permanent injury. It's unbelievable. Why hasn't this been made public? What's been going on? The media are full of reports about the threats of terrorism but are silent about what is what was arguably the most dramatic and serious problem ever found in the health system.