This was published 6 years ago
Sorry, wrong patient: Major Queensland hospital errors revealed
Dozens of Queensland patients have been seriously hurt or died as a result of errors in hospitals in recent years.
There were 15 sentinel events, or mistakes leading to the death or injury of a patient, in Queensland in 2015-16, and 82 across Australia.
A federal report has revealed the number of serious errors reported in Queensland hospitals over five years.Credit: Nic Walker
Over five years, there were 52 incidents reported in Queensland hospitals, according to a Productivity Commission report.
In 2015-16, there was one procedure involving the wrong patient or body part resulting in death or major permanent loss of function in Queensland.
There were four suicides of patients in inpatient units, seven cases of instruments or other materials being left in patients after surgery, one blood transfusion reaction after the wrong blood type was used, one incident where a medication error led to the death of a patient and one maternal death associated with pregnancy, birth or the six weeks after birth.
While there were 15 sentinel events reported in the most recent year's data, Queensland Health had more than 1.3 million admissions to public hospitals per year, with 200,000 patients undergoing a surgical procedure.
Australian Medical Association Queensland president Bill Boyd said the number of serious mistakes was small compared with the total procedures performed every year.
"I think we can certainly reassure Australians that we have the very highest standards and it would be almost difficult to leave an instrument inside somebody and it doesn't get spotted - it would be a very rare occurrence," he said.
Dr Boyd said reporting the data could led to better processes at hospitals, such as rigorous measures to check the identity of patients.
A Queensland Health spokeswoman also said sentinel events were rare.
"Queensland Health will continue to work with clinicians across our state to identify causative factors for these events and opportunities to re-design our systems and processes to minimise patient harm," she said.
"Surgical safety checklists and count records are now routine practice in Queensland hospitals. These were developed to support a team approach to patient safety with a three-stage check - before, during and after the procedure - to account for items."
The spokeswoman said preliminary data from 2016-17 showed a reduction in the number of cases to two.
She said the government had invested $9.6 million over three years in suicide prevention in health services, and had begun implementing recommendations from a review into a mental health care.
However, data in the national Productivity Commission report covers only eight types of sentinel events.
Information on the serious errors has not been released by Queensland Health since 2012, when hospital and health services were created under the Newman government, and an annual patient safety report was scrapped.
The final Queensland Health report showed 281 confirmed sentinel events in the most serious category in 2010-11, of which only 11 incidents met the national definition.
Health Minister Steven Miles said the Queensland government was "working to reverse the reckless decisions made by the Newman government".
"[We have] a range of additional measures in place to track and improve patient safety and to encourage a culture of reporting adverse outcomes because it is shown to improve clinical outcomes," he said.
Community consultation on a discussion paper on future public reporting for patient safety and quality in public and private hospitals in Queensland closed in October, with KPMG to provide a report by early 2018.
"We will be using this important feedback to inform development of a policy approach to expand public reporting of patient safety and quality and ensure transparency," Dr Miles said.
"Queenslanders should be able to access the performance data of every hospital, not just public hospitals. Which is why the discussion paper also considers the implications of compulsory reporting of sentinel data across public, private and primary care facilities."
"This would give greater transparency and confidence to the whole community.
"It is important that the health system looks hard at itself, openly and transparently to ensure patient safety."