Data helps patients calculate medical risks

THE riskiest medical procedures are revealed by a new website that allows patients to find out their chances of suffering an adverse event in hospital.

The Hospital Complications Calculator developed by the Grattan Institute shows transplantation has the highest risk with more than three in four people suffering and adverse event.

Tracheostomy and ventilation with a complication rate of 75 per cent is the next most risky. Half of all cardiothoracic surgery patients had an adverse event, four in 10 people in overnight for colorectal procedures had an adverse event and so did one in eight women having surgery for breast cancer.

Nearly half of all women giving birth suffered a complication (44 per cent) with breast disorders, obstetric trauma, haemorrhage and foetal heart abnormality the most common.

Interventional cardiology has a 12 per cent complication rate, orthopaedics 7 per cent, neurosurgery 19 per cent and urology 9 per cent.

Patients can use the tool to search by their sex, age group and procedure to discover the risk.

The tool shows the longer you stay in hospital the greater the risk of complication with those people having same day surgery at least risk of a complication.

Patients who had day surgery had a seven per cent risk of a complication but those who stayed in overnight had a 25 per cent risk of complication.

On average, patients who suffer a complication after a procedure end up staying in hospital for five extra days.

The Calculator also gives people a list of the most common types of complications for each treatment. It shows a woman suffering a complication during her breast surgery is most likely to haemorrhage (which occurs in 3.2 per cent of breast surgery).

The next most likely complication for such women is low blood pressure (2.3 per cent).

The risk rating is currently based on all public and private hospital admissions Australia wide but Grattan Institute researcher and former Health Department chief Professor Stephen Duckett says it would be even better if the states released the information on a by hospital basis.

A patient’s risk of developing a complication varies dramatically depending on which hospital they go to: in some cases, the additional risk at the worst-performing hospitals can be four times higher than at the best performers, he says.

One in nine hospital or about 900,000 patients suffers a complication each year in Australia but Professor Duckett says “a veil of secrecy” hangs over which hospitals and clinicians have higher rates of patient complications.

“Once you start publishing this data on a by hospital basis there is an incentive for hospitals to lift their game,” he said.

ONCE YOU START PUBLISHING THIS DATA ON A BY HOSPITAL BASIS THERE IS AN INCENTIVE FOR HOSPITALS TO LIFT THEIR GAME STEPHEN DUCKETT