KEY POINTS:
The Health and Disability Commissioner says New Zealand hospitals remain unacceptably unsafe, two years after he slammed progress on improving services as "slow, patchy and uncoordinated".
Today, commissioner Ron Paterson said the 2006 description remained true, and the country needed strong national leadership and better communication between its health providers.
Presenting the commission's annual report to the parliamentary health select committee today, Mr Paterson said greater transparency and open publication of hospital data could improve safety standards.
New Zealand was falling behind the rest of the world on publication of comparative quality data.
Mr Paterson said it would not have to identify individual clinicians, but could be in the form of DHB reports.
"Wouldn't it be good to know that cardiac surgery at Dunedin Hospital is as safe or safer than Wellington, and if one's better or worse, wouldn't it be good for them to be able to look at what they're doing and lift their game?" he said.
He said initial reporting could centre on infection rates, medication errors and surgical mortality.
"Why do you do it? You don't do it to name and shame, you do it because the research evidence shows that that sort of information makes a difference.
"That organisations lift their game because, surprise surprise, none of us like to be seen to be doing not as well as the organisation down the road."
Mr Paterson said the country was still only making "slow and patchy" progress on patient safety.
In 2006, two quality experts said New Zealand hospitals were "not acceptably safe".
"That remains true. There is still a lot more that needs to be done."
When asked what the impediments to quality were, Mr Paterson said a major obstacle was that New Zealand had 21 different boards doing their own thing.
"We lack co-ordination and actually some direction in these things.
"I think we have an unduly complicated system for four million people."
Hospitals and GPs needed to communicate better between each other, and DHBs needed to share ideas so they could "stop reinventing the wheel," he said.
"There's a lack of national leadership."
Asked by National MP Jonathan Coleman whose responsibility it was, Mr Paterson said it was the Ministry of Health.
"I think there's a real opportunity for a minister and a ministry to do more," he said.
- NZPA
