A new report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
(AIHW) shows that just over 30% of public and private sector
medical indemnity claims made in 2004-05 were for harm or loss that
allegedly resulted from an error or negligence in a medical or
surgical procedure.
Ms Jenny Hargreaves, Head of the Institute's Economics and
Health Services Group said claims were most often made for failure
to perform a procedure, having the wrong procedure performed,
having a procedure performed on the wrong part of the body,
post-operative complications and failure of procedure.
'Less commonly, claims related to diagnosis issues (23.6%), for
example, failure to correctly diagnose a problem or a
misdiagnosis.
'Treatment issues were the reason behind 13.2% of claims and
included delayed treatment, failure to provide treatment, and
complications arising from treatment,' she said.
The report, A national picture of medical indemnity claims
in Australia 2004-05, is the first to contain information
about medical indemnity claims filed in both the public and private
health care sectors.
It covers incidents that gave rise to medical indemnity claims,
the medical specialties involved in those claims, the people
affected, the nature of injury, and the size of the claims, the
claim outcomes and the length of time claims have been open.
'It is important to note however, that the report represents a
profile of medical indemnity claims data only - fault or negligence
on the part of the health care provider is not necessarily
established,' Ms Hargreaves said.
Of all the claims filed from 1 July 2004 to 30 June 2005, 62.0%
involved adults, 4.7% related to children, and babies were the
subject of 3.6% of the claims. In 29.7% of claims there was no
information on age.
Over three quarters (77.1%) of claims finalised in the 2004-05
financial year had a total claim size of less than $100,000. Claims
with sizes in excess of $500,000 constituted 1.7% of all finalised
claims.
'Although information for private hospitals is not available,
previous medical indemnity reports have only presented public
sector claims data so this report constitutes a significant step
towards making comprehensive medical indemnity information
available,' Ms Hargreaves said.
4 May 2007
Further information: Ms Jenny Hargreaves, AIHW,
tel. 02 6244 1121 or mob. 0407 012 520
For media copies of the report: Publications
Officer, AIHW, tel. 61 2 6244 1032.
Availability: Check the AIHW Publications
Catalogue for availability of the report: A national picture of
medical indemnity claims in Australia 2004-05.