By Rachel Morton
The Health Quality and Safety Commission hopes the mishaps report will help reduce the “small percentage” number of hospital mishaps from nearly 380 people in 2011.
A recently released report from the commission found 377 patients in New Zealand hospitals suffered serious and avoidable injuries last year, with 86 of those dying.
Commission chairman Alan Merry says following the report efforts will go to reducing this number.
“It is a concern that we continue to have these things happen but the whole point of this exercise is to try to understand them and continue to do everything we can to reduce them.”
Auckland District Health Board chief medical officer Margaret Wilsher says the report will help prevent mistakes from reoccurring.
“We have no excuses but from investigating the events we understand how the harm occurred and what we need to do in future to prevent the harm from occurring again.”
However Mr Merry says the number of mishaps is relatively small.
“You have to keep in mind that it's very large numbers of patients that are being treated so it's a very small percentage. But when you have large numbers you have to have good systems and you can never stop the vigilance.”
For 11 patients the wrong procedure was carried out, or performed on the wrong part of their body - or even on the wrong person.
Seven swabs or instruments were not removed after surgery, 108 people were wrongly diagnosed or given the wrong treatment, and 25 were given the wrong medication
The number of people suffering falls increased to 195 last year, 65 more than the previous year.
Overall the number of serious incidents was up 18 percent on the previous year and Mr Merry believes it is because staff were more diligent about reporting them.
“It's not legally enforceable that they get reported and there is variation in the reporting. One of the things we've done is issue a new policy of what should be reported.”
Auckland District Health Board reported the most mishaps - 54, up from just over 30 last year.
Canterbury District Health Board reduced their number of mishaps to 49, down from nearly 70.
There was not much change for Capital and Coast District Health Board with 16 this year compared to 18 last year.
The second most mishaps were reported at Waikato District Health Board at 53, a similar number to last year.
3 News