Health disaster incidents spike in Victoria

The patient advocate says the 240 sentinel events in Victoria’s health system in 2021-22 ‘should concern everybody’.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

The chief executive of Australia’s peak body for medical patients says the Andrews government’s argument that increased reporting is behind a massive spike in reported “sentinel” events in Victoria’s health system implies that the real numbers may have been at least as bad in the past.

Australian Patients Association CEO David Clarke’s comments come after the government on Monday released a Safer Care Victoria report which revealed that there had been 240 sentinel events in the state’s health system in 2021-22, up from 168 the previous year, and 42 in 2014-15.

A “sentinel event” is defined as a “wholly preventable incident ­resulting in serious physical or psychological harm to, or death of, a patient”.

Asked whether he feared there many instances of preventable serious harm or death had gone unreported in previous years, Mr Clarke said: “It’s not a matter of fearing that may have been the case. By definition, if the issue is that reporting is now more accurate, what it implies is that the real numbers may have been like this in the past, but we simply didn’t know.”

“Our healthcare system has a historic culture where it’s often been hard to get to the truth in difficult situations. That’s changing, which is both positive and welcome, but I think we’re all beginning to understand the scale of some of the problems that are occurring, and I think we all need to work together to resolve those,” Mr Clarke said.

The patient advocate said the numbers in the report “should concern everybody”.

Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas.

“If we’re doing a better job, which is the Victorian government’s take on things, then congratulations from a systemic perspective on … increased reporting,” Mr Clarke said.

“However, numbers are numbers. That is a lot of suffering, and it’s important for us all to think carefully about those numbers, and continue on the drive for highest quality reporting, but also to ask ourselves what can we do about these issues to reduce the numbers.”

Asked whether the government had implied that potentially hundreds of instances of serious harm and death had gone unreported over many years, Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said she would not “speculate about what may or may not have happened in the past, because it would not be it would not be fruitful to do so.”

“It would be mere speculation, but I do want to say this: that I encourage and continue to support our staff to deliver open disclosure, to speak up when they see something concerning, to let people know when something’s gone wrong, because that’s the only way that we can fix the system,” Ms Thomas said.

The minister said the establishment of Safer Care Victoria in 2017 and a legislated duty of candour introduced last November – requiring health services to disclose preventable harm to patients and apologise – had been integral to encouraging reporting of sentinel events.