Patients’ group call for safety improvements in hospitals

NEARLY 7,000 patients had accidents while in care last year, a patients’ group said yesterday as it called on hospitals to improve safety.

“When such errors do occur the impact on patients can be so serious as to lead to their death, or be left with permanent or temporary emotional or physical injury,” said Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patient’s Association (IPA).

Figures obtained by the IPA reveal that in the first quarter of 1991 there were 3,175 reports of slips, trips and falls in health board-run hospitals.

Last year’s estimated total number of accidents brings the overall figure for 2001 to 6,862. The figures, presented yesterday at a conference on risk management in the health sector, represent accidents in acute hospitals and do not include nursing homes, day centres or other medical facilities.

Although there are no available figures for the number of accident victims who suffered injuries due to a fall, many would likely have required further hospital treatment.

“These figures indicate that there is a serious issue here, not only for the impact on patients physical and emotional well-being but also the wasted resources if only just a small proportion of these patients had an extended stay due to their accident,” said Mr McMahon.

Apart from slips and falls, Mr McMahon also raised the overall issue of hospital safety. “There are serious safety problems in the delivery of health care anywhere. These safety issues can be attributed to medication, clinical, or management errors. For example in the USA, some 90,000 deaths occurred in 2001 and in the UK some 1,100 deaths.”

Speaking at the risk management conference, the Department of Health’s Brendan Phelan acknowledged that the Government had in the past failed to implement adequate risk management policies.

Mr Phelan said that the initial factor which forced the Government to look at the issue was not concern for safety of patients but concern over the escalating legal bills from people suing hospitals.

“While concern for quality and patient safety have always been major drivers for risk avoidance strategies it has to be admitted that in the early 1990s the predominant development that forced people, including the Department of Health, to begin to take an interest in the topic was the spiralling cost of professional indemnity and public liability insurance cover,” he said.

In July the Department of Health introduced the Clinical Indemnity Scheme to deal with all litigation arising out of accidents hospitals. At the same time the Government gave the green light to the commissioning of a national risk management strategy to be undertaken by the State Claims Agency under the aegis of the Department of Health.

But Mr Phelan, who is the main architect of the Department’s Enterprise Liability scheme, said progress on the implementation of risk management throughout the health services had been patchy.