The number of Australians who die as a result of healthcare mismanagement may be as high as five times the nation's annual road toll, says an Australian health expert.
Professor Jeff Richardson, from the Centre for Health Economics at Monash University, estimates that the national death toll – as a result of errors in the Australian health system – could be as high as 9000 per annum and around 25,000 are left with permanent disabilities.
Professor Richardson said the last study to record the number of Australians who have died as a result of health mismanagement estimated that around 18,000 people died, in part, as a result of errors in health care, and around 50,000 people had developed permanent disabilities.
The Quality in Australian Health Care Study of 1995 reviewed the medical records of over 14,000 admissions to 28 hospitals in New South Wales and South Australia. National figures were then extrapolated from these results.
Apart from dire health effects, the 1995 study also estimated that the direct hospital costs of adverse events, both fatal and non-fatal, were estimated to be around $900 million per annum.
Despite recommendations to repeat the study, no further national data has been collected.
However, in 2005, Dr Ross Wilson one of the authors of the 1995 study produced a second report stating: "Now, 10 years on…it is still possible that up to 16 per cent of hospitalised patients will suffer an adverse event."
Taking into account population growth and some minor safety changes that had been put in place since then, Professor Richardson also estimates the figures to remain high.
"I think it is the most important challenge in Australia at the moment.
"...the level of errors that occur in the health system, the number of people who died because of the mistakes," he said.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is due to meet with the State Premiers in Melbourne next week to discuss a range of State and Commonwealth related issues, including health and hospitals.
The Labor Government has already pledged $290 million to a public dental programme, $600 million to slash waiting lists for elective surgery in Australia's public hospitals and $158 million to create up to 2000 transition care beds for older Australians.
The Government's focus at the premier's meetings is expected to centre on these areas.
Professor Richardson, who has recently completed a study on ways to reduce the incidence of adverse events in Australia's health system, said there were a number of factors of little cost that could be addressed to improve the system.
One was to introduce legal protection for doctors. Doctors in Australia are very good, he said, but they are human and make mistakes. Because doctors can presently be sued for large amounts of money, however, no one dares to speak out about doctors' mistakes.
This then prevents anyone from learning from their errors and also restricts the collection of data.
Professor Richardson said the lack of accountability because of secrecy also shielded the malpractice of bad doctors and cited the case of Dr Patel as an example.
Dr Jayant Patel, dubbed "Dr Death", has been linked to over 80 deaths while he was working as director of surgery at the Bundaberg Base Hospital. He escaped to America, but may be extradited to Australia to face a number of charges, including manslaughter.
"With a culture of secrecy that even the good doctors want to preserve, then the bad doctors are protected as well," Professor Richardson said.
Other factors to help reduce error levels would require further capital – but were equally important.
"We haven't digitised our records in hospitals," he said. "Doctors still take notes in handwriting on clipboards.
"Those clipboards get lost. The notes get misread. They get left in one part of the hospital. So the doctor makes a snap judgment at the bedside because he is busy.
"There should be a computer monitor, we should be in the computer age. We have been in it for 30 years."
A similar problem occurs with X-rays that he says medical staff regularly complain about.
"When we take X-rays, we still leave them in the plate form and they have to be lugged around physically, when they could be digitised for anyone that wants them at the bedside. It is not even particularly expensive."
"So in other words, we have a whole system there, which has not caught up with the information revolution," he said.
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