PATIENTS will be able to compare hospitals' safety records, with the public disclosure of infection rates that afflict an estimated 155 patients every day in NSW expected to get the go-ahead within months.
In a surprise move, the state Health Minister, Reba Meagher, has backed the publication of infection rates as part of a uniform national scheme supported by federal and state health ministers yesterday.
The state Health Department and Ms Meagher had previously resisted the concept of hospital "league tables". But yesterday she said NSW was prepared to pursue the establishment of nationally consistent indicators for hospital infection rates and she expected there would be national agreement in about two months.
About 200,000 people in Australia are infected each year while under health care, mainly in hospitals, according to estimates in a report by the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care released yesterday.
Such infections, many resulting from the widespread failure of doctors and nurses to wash their hands between patients, result in patients taking up an extra 2 million bed days a year.
The breakthrough came as ministers reported that 14,000 extra patients had received elective surgery as a result of the Rudd Government's $600 million scheme to cut the number of patients experiencing inappropriate delays for surgery.
NSW had completed 4500 extra procedures - 52 per cent of its target - while maintaining the normal surgery output of about 95,000 cases, Ms Meagher said.
The ministers also agreed to adopt a standard patient identification wristband to reduce confusion over different colours being used to tag patients with particular conditions.
The Queensland minister, Stephen Robertson, said: "If through enhanced reporting [on infection rates] … the electors of this country can judge whether we are performing or not, they will make appropriate decisions every three years or so. That's the ultimate penalty if you don't perform, you get thrown out of office. That's a pretty good incentive."
The federal minister, Nicola Roxon, said national agreement on 40 performance indicators to measure federal and state health services were "vital, if we are going to do things like improve infection rates in hospitals".
The commission's report to the ministers on measures to prevent infections in hospitals and other health facilities cites the "fragmented state" of health care infection surveillance in Australia. This meant information was "scarce, unreliable and difficult to generalise from".
Growing resistance to antibiotic drugs "contributed to poor patient outcomes and threatens to undermine the great advances in treatment of infectious diseases".
But there was no national program to draw together data on the incidence and prevalence of multi-resistant organisms, the commission report said.
Ms Meagher also backed the publication of hospital-by-hospital mortality rate figures.
The president of the Australian Medical Association, Rosanna Capolingua, reacted cautiously to elective surgery figures and the proposal for publication of infection rates.
She said she was pleased to hear 14,000 extra surgical cases had been performed. "I don't want to sound sceptical but I would want to see the detail. That's an awful lot."
She said publishing hospital infection rates raised concerns about comparing hospitals dealing with patients of varying risk levels. How they stack up Estimated annual number of infection cases triggered by health care:
NSW 56,705
National 177,392
Estimated bed days lost because of health care infections:
NSW 629,600
National 1,970,142
Source: Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care