ADHB backs national work on adverse events

The ADHB welcomes any work to decrease adverse events in our hospitals nationally. ADHB has taken significant strides in improving quality systems including online risk reporting and clinical effectiveness programmes.

“While we have already embarked on a substantial amount of work in this area, there is no room for complacency. We support the work of the Quality Improvement Committee announced today toward improving systems and minimising the risk to patients,” says David Sage, Chief Medical Officer, ADHB.

“Any preventable error at ADHB is unacceptable and regrettable. We are committed to improving patient safety and the systems that minimise the risk to patients. We operate under significant pressure and there are multiple systems and processes in place to minimise the risk to patients – sometimes despite everyone’s best efforts, something goes wrong.”

Dr Sage says when something goes wrong – or harm is prevented at the last minute – the hospital has an obligation to patients and their families to do everything it can to investigate what happened, fix it and try to make sure that it does not re-occur.

“Moreover, we have a responsibility of open disclosure to patients and their families so they know exactly what happened and what we have done as a result of any investigation,” he says.

But he cautions on the need to balance the requirement for public accountability with the privacy of patients, families and whanau, and of health professionals.

“We have to continue to encourage our staff to report incidents to enable us to identify preventable errors so we can make changes to ensure these errors do not happen again.”

He says there are large differences in classification between hospitals so it is not possible to make any comparison based on the number of incidents reported by different hospitals.

“As the largest hospital we tend to have bigger numbers simply because we treat more patients and deal with more complex cases. And the number of incidents reported continues to increase as our reporting systems continue to increase. This is a good thing, as it’s a sign of a healthy reporting culture,” says Dr Sage.

Along with all other DHBs, ADHB has released details of recent reported serious and sentinel events. These can all be found at www.qic.health.govt.nz

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Sneha Paul, ADHB Communications Manager
Tel. 021 804 122