Strengthening safety statistics: How to make hospital safety data more useful

Australia needs to reform how it collects and uses information about patient safety, to reduce the risk of more scandals and tragedies in our hospitals, according to Grattan Institute’s latest report, Strenghtening safety statistics: How to make hospital safety data more useful. The system is awash with data, but the information is poorly collated, not shared with patients, and often not given to doctors, explains Health Program Director Stephen Duckett in this podcast. Inexcusably, private hospitals are left outside state safety monitoring of hospitals. The performance of private hospitals should be analysed in the same way as public hospitals, and the results fed back to them and reported widely.
To ensure hospital safety data is more useful, it must be more trustworthy, relevant and accessible. The many different data sets should be linked, and the information should be presented more clearly so doctors can act on it and patients can understand it.

You can listen to the podcast or download the report here.