Australian institute report highlights patients’ risks in lower performing hospitals, need for safety performance to be made public

One in every nine patients who go into hospital in Australia suffers a complication, and if they stay overnight the figure increases to one in four. This is why Australia’s Grattan Institute report indicates hospitals need to make rates of complications public to help identify which are better performers. The report shows a patient’s risk of developing a complication varies widely depending on which hospital they go to. In some cases, it found additional risks at the worst-performing hospitals was four times higher than at the best performers. The report calls for all hospitals to lift their safety performance to the level of the best 10% of hospitals, meaning an extra 250,000 patients would leave hospital free of complications annually. Currently, hospital safety policies in Australia focus on a small subset of serious complications described as ‘preventable’. The report also calls for private health insurers to release information on private hospitals.