Do not panic over errors and deaths

There are certainly problems in the health system, and no one at all would claim things can’t be better.  But I am wary of the uber-publicity over the report yesterday which detailed 182 serious errors in hospitals, including 40 patient deaths.

No health system will ever be error free, or even free from the tragedy of preventable deaths due to error.  Doesn’t matter who is in Government, doesn’t matter how much funding there is – errors will always happen, because as the saying goes “to err is human”.

Now this is not to say that the current level is acceptable.  I am not sure one could ever agree on any level of error being acceptable, but what I would say is important is to establish a trend where the error rate is decreasing over time, not increasing.

It is good that the Government is being more open about the level of error in our health system.  From the newspaper articles, it seems that this report is not entirely comprehensive but an “incomplete snapshot”.  The challenge is to document the complete picture, to measure it, and to put policies and resources in place to reduce it.  That is a task which could well occupy Health Ministers for some time to come.  And it will never reduce to zero. You just can’t get error free medicine.