Medical errors cost doctors $37m in payouts to patients in NSW

The cost of mistakes being made by doctors through misdiagnosis and accidents during surgery and consultations reached more than $37 million in the 2016-17 financial year, The Saturday Telegraph can reveal.

• Rise in extremist views stalking our suburbs
• Death closes Long Jetty polling booth

New figures have revealed the cost of mistakes being made by doctors through misdiagnosis and accidents during surgery and consultations.

The NSW government’s ­insurance body, iCare, paid out more than $37 million in the 2016-17 financial year to ­patients who suffered harm caused by doctors, according to documents obtained by The Saturday Telegraph.

More than $11 million was paid out to 129 people who lodged successful claims for mistakes made during surgery, while another $5.1 million was paid to people who lodged claims for non-procedural incidents­.

Doctors in NSW paid out more than $37 million to patients over medical errors in the 2016-17 financial year.

A total of $7.94 million was paid to 157 people who claimed they were wrongly diagnosed, the largest single category of successful claims.

Problems with newborn babies and the care of pregnant women led to payouts of 71 claims at a cost of $4.62 million.

Other problems related to anaesthetics, consent, infection control and failures to provide treatment.

MORE NEWS:

TOUGH TEEN BATTLING JUST TO GET HOME TO HIS TWIN

SCHOOLS STRUGGLE TO FIND ENOUGH VOLUNTEER ETHICS TEACHERS

Health Services Union NSW secretary Gerard Hayes said that understaffing could lead to negligence when it came to correctly diagnosing conditions­.

“Diagnostics is under pressure in terms of staffing numbers and pressure is on a range of clinicians and hospital workers to progress patients through a hospital setting in a relatively reasonable time, but you need the resources to be adequately able to do that,” Mr Hayes said.

Health Services Union NSW secretary Gerard Hayes said “diagnostics is under pressure in terms of staffing numbers”. Picture: Hollie Adams

“Things like medical imaging and pathology services are really under the pump and there are a lot of services that are really stretched.

“Whether it’s a nurse, a physiotherapist, a doctor, a wardsperson, they are all saying the same thing: they’re doing what they can with what they have and what they have isn’t enough.”

Nepean Hospital in Sydney’s west recorded the single biggest number of claims in 16-17, with 25 claims amounting to $1.16 million in payouts.

But the most expensive claims were at Westmead and Newcastle’s John Hunter hospitals, each with payouts of $2.3 million.