Skip to main content RSS Info Close Search Facebook Twitter
Location
Category
Providers / Vacancies
Feedback

Report on Government Services 2009

The Productivity Commission has released the Report on Government Services 2009. This is the 14th edition of the report, produced by a Steering Committee of senior officials from Australian, state and territory governments for the Australian Council of Australian Governments.

The report’s coverage includes: government services and Indigenous people; public hospitals; primary and community health; breast cancer detection and management; mental health; aged care services; services for people with a disability; and out-of-home care services; SAAP; and delivery of Commonwealth rent assistance.
 
In hospitals, the report shows there were 187 major adverse (sentinel) events across Australia, 49 of which were in Queensland public hospitals in 2006-2007, almost a quarter of the national total for that financial year. The state with the second highest number of such events was Victoria with 45, South Australia with 36, New South Wales with 32, Western Australia with 15, the ACT with seven, the Northern Territory with two and Tasmania with one.
 
They range from operations on the wrong patient or body part, leaving surgical instruments inside the body, death in child birth and infants discharged to the wrong family.
 
The report says there were 33 procedures in Queensland involving the wrong patient or body part compared to six years before. There were 29 in South Australia, 20 in Victoria, nine in New South Wales, six in Western Australia and one in Tasmania. On 25 occasions across Australia people needed to have second operations to remove surgical instruments. This occurred nine times in New South Wales, eight in Victoria, three in both Queensland and South Australia, and it happened twice in WA.
 
Of the 14 cases in which patients died after being given the wrong medication, six of them happened in Queensland (five more than the previous year), followed by New South Wales (three), Victoria (three) and WA (two).
 
As well as the serious sentinel events, the report measured infection rates in four key procedures – hip replacement, knee reconstruction, lower segment caesarean section and abdominal hysterectomy. Queensland had much lower rates of infection in the four procedures than the other states and territories.   The most common procedure was knee replacements, and the infection rate for this operation was 1.7% in New South Wales, 1.5% in Victoria, 0.4% in Queensland and 0.6% in Western Australia.

Share this article

Read next

Subscribe

Subscribe to our Talking Aged Care newsletter to get our latest articles, delivered straight to your inbox
  1. Eighty years after getting married, this couple lives together...
  2. Who says your age should limit your dreams?
  3. Data from a recently released report highlights a concerning...
  4. With an ageing and growing population, data from the...
  5. Approximately 411,000 Australians are estimated to be living...
  6. How could you benefit from attending university as an older...

Recent articles

  1. The new initiative brings older Aussies together to see the...
  2. A collaboration between Dementia Australia and VistaPrint...
  3. How can you look after yourself during the expected heatwaves...
  4. How is an interactive app being used in aged care settings to...
  5. How could the upcoming strengthening of super standards save...
  6. Brother Thomas Oliver Pickett, a Western Australian volunteer,...
  7. Why is an illegal website targeting older Australians?
  8. Eighty years after getting married, this couple lives together...
  9. How does heart health impact your risk of dementia?
  10. Instead of going to the hospital, could older Australians...
  11. Recent data indicates changes in the current COVID-19...
  12. One aged care provider is launching a mini-series of free...
  1. {{ result.posted_at | timeago }}

Sorry, no results were found
Perhaps you misspelled your search query, or need to try using broader search terms.
Please type a topic to search
Some frequently searched topics are "dementia", "elderly" etc
Close