The number of incidents where patients were unintentionally harmed in public hospitals has risen by more than 10 percent in a year.
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The Health Quality and Safety Commission has released its summary of adverse events for the year ending June 2020, unexpected incidents that resulted in harm or death or had the potential to.
There were 627 serious adverse events reported by district health boards, up from 566 in the previous 12 months.
About half were problems with clinical management and about a third were because of falls.
The commission's clinical lead for the adverse events programme, David Hughes, noted Covid-19 and the lockdown have made it a very challenging year for the health and disability sector but it must do better.
The number of adverse events had been steadily growing since they were recorded in 2006.
The actual increase may not be as big as it seemed because district health boards and become better at reporting incidents, Dr Hughes said.
The commission did not release details of individual incidents.
This is its breakdown of the type of events.
- 355 were clinical management events
- 231 were harm because of falls
- 20 were related to medication or intravenous fluid
- 13 were healthcare associated infections
- 4 were consumer accidents
- 3 were related to medical devices/equipment
- 1 was related to oxygen/gas vapour