KEY POINTS:
The National Party says the Government is afraid of the impact a report on hospital safety is going to have.
The report, due for release later today, will show New Zealand's 21 District Health Boards (DHBs) reported a total 195 "sentinel and serious adverse events" between July 2006 and June last year.
A sentinel adverse event is one that is life threatening or has led to an unanticipated death or major loss of function not related to the patient's illness.
A serious adverse event has the potential to result in death or major loss of function not related to the patient's illness.
It will show a table of these events reported by each DHB, although it will say comparisons should not be made because they have different systems for defining those events.
The 195 sentinel and serious events represent 2.2 for every 10,000 hospital discharges, or 0.022 per cent.
"The Government is terrified about the release of this information, particularly following the Health and Disability Commissioner (Ron Paterson) last week saying that public hospitals were `unacceptably unsafe'," Mr Ryall said.
"Patients are asking how come the Government is spending $5 billion a year extra on health, but our public hospitals are being declared `unsafe'."
The report will show Auckland reported the most sentinel and serious events, 26, followed by Waikato with 24, Canterbury and Waitemata with 22 each, Hawke's Bay with 20 and Capital and Coast with 14.
The rest ranged between 12 (Southland) to Tairawhiti (one).
There is an overall category of "adverse events" which means any harm caused to a patient, even if it is minor, and the report will show comparisons between New Zealand and hospitals in other countries.
The comparisons are for acute care hospitals, and New Zealand had 630 adverse events per 10,000 admissions.
In the United States the figure was 380, in Australia 1660, Britain 1170, Denmark 900 and Canada 750.
The report will urge caution with these comparisons, because each country has a different system for recording adverse events.
- NZPA
