KEY POINTS:
A top-ranking health chief is pushing for a radical revamp of the health system, saying hospitals are not safe enough.
Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson said 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, Mr Paterson said improved access to hospital information could increase safety standards.
Medication safety, hospital-acquired infections, and deaths during surgery were his main concerns.
Mr Paterson said about 13 per cent of patients had something go wrong while in hospital.
"A lot of those things could be minor - a reaction to medicine or a rash - but a very small proportion, still a significant proportion, are preventable deaths or a preventable permanent disability."
The 2004 death of a man in Wellington Hospital was one example of hospital-system failure, he said. The 50-year-old died of respiratory failure and pneumonia 40 hours after admission, following a series of errors by medical staff.
Mr Paterson said all the country's 21 district health boards were equally unsafe and all had their particular "pressure points".
A November review of hospital safety revealed that every DHB except Hutt Valley had conceded a similar tragedy could happen on their wards.
Mr Paterson said New Zealand was falling behind the rest of the world on publication of comparative quality data.
The information would not have to identify individual clinicians, but could be in the form of DHB reports posted on websites, he said.
He would like to see the system running by the end of the year.
"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?"
Initial reporting could centre on infection rates, medication errors and surgical mortality.
It is understood Auckland District Health Board quality improvement chairman Pat Snedden is to release national statistics on unexpected deaths next week.
That follows a Capital and Coast DHB saga in which three people died awaiting heart surgery.
Mr Paterson said the country was still only making "slow and patchy" progress on patient safety.
A major obstacle was that New Zealand had 21 different boards doing their own thing.
"To have 21 DHBs for a population of four million, surely we should be able to do a bit more than others.
"We lack co-ordination and actually some direction in these things.
"If I go from a rest home to hospital it needs to be a clear transition, for things to be done the same way."
Mr Paterson said it was the Ministry of Health's responsibility.
Health Minister David Cunliffe said he supported calls for greater co-ordination in the health sector.
The New Zealand Medical Association chairman, Peter Foley, said the current DHB system often impeded doctors' efforts to do the best they could for patients.
- NZPA
