Hospitals’ poor care uncovered

AUSTRALIA’S public and private hospitals have been found wanting by a shocking survey that reveals patients are being left in pain and often get no help going to the toilet.

Half of all patients in public hospitals and one in three patients in private hospitals said they were left in pain, a national Medibank patient survey found.

Fewer than half the patients in public hospitals received help with a bedpan or going to the toilet as soon as they wanted. In private hospitals, four in 10 patients did not get help with the toilet when needed.

Medibank surveyed more than 11,000 of its members who had a hospital admission between July 2016 and July 2017, asking them 31 questions about their care.

The health fund wants to use the survey to drive improvements in patient care and give members the information they need to choose the best hospitals.

To date only aggregate data are available but within 12 months the scores will be provided to Medibank members on a hospital-byhospital basis.

“These findings reveal a disturbing level of poor and even unsafe care and should not be tolerated by any hospital,” a spokesman for the Consumer’s Health Forum said.

“Now we need to see the release of individual hospitals’ performance figures to drive better patient care, along with more information on patient treatments’ outcomes.”

Medibank’s group executive Andrew Wilson said the data eventually would be comparative, however, he denied this would amount to a hospital league table.

The results will be made available to GPs and specialists in deciding where to refer patients when they go to hospital.

The survey found private hospitals scored better on every measure.

Nurses in private hospitals were rated 10 points higher on listening and explaining skills in private hospitals.

Doctors in private hospitals were rated up to 13 points better than in public hospitals.