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Transforming Health critic releases alleged hospital death stats

Prominent Transforming Health critic Warren Jones has released part of a report he says was produced by a senior SA Health clinician, suggesting hospital ward closures could lead to higher patient death rates.

Jan 17, 2017, updated Jan 17, 2017
The Royal Adelaide Hospital.

The Royal Adelaide Hospital.

The single-page extract compares the proportion of patients who have died in illness-specific hospitals wards – referred to as “inliers” – and those who have died after they were placed in wards not specific to their illness because of beds shortages – “outliers”.

Jones told reporters at a press conference with Opposition health spokesperson Stephen Wade this morning that: “Patients who are admitted to hospital … who can’t be put in the bed that’s most appropriate to their care are put anywhere they can find a bed”.

“This is … going to happen, more and more, as [SA Health closes] more beds.

“These patients who are shunted out as outliers have a 40 per cent increase in the death rate over patients who are in the wards that they are supposed to be.”

Jones says the extract was given to him by a senior SA Health clinician – a “very reliable source” – who wished to remain anonymous.

He released the data, along with a written statement to the media this morning, which says: “The report shows that outliers had a death rate of 7.64 per cent compared to 5.33 per cent for inliers – an excess of 44 per cent deaths in the outlier group”.

SA Health says it is aiming to minimise “outliers” but is yet to verify or respond to the document directly.

Transforming Health clinical ambassador Dorothy Keefe told InDaily: “We’re currently working intensively with the clinicians at the Royal Adelaide Hospital to reconfigure the beds in existing wards to minimise the number of outliers.”

Jones adds in his statement: “[The report] estimates that the proposed closure of one ward alone (S7) has the potential to lead to an additional two deaths each month – from ‘2 to 3’ to ‘4 to 5’.”

He suggested that future patients of the Royal Adelaide Hospital’s Ward S7, which he said SA Health would close, would become “outliers” and suffer a higher likelihood of death.

Jones said he received the extract from a “very reliable source”.

“I haven’t got the rest of the report … the person that wrote it isn’t prepared to release this publicly,” he told InDaily.

He told reporters that “this is as accurate data as you’ll ever get” and that the source of the extract was not going public himself “because it’s very difficult for even senior medical people to speak out with information that might embarrass the government”.

He said several senior SA Health doctors – including Queen Elizabeth Hospital head of cardiology Professor John Horowitz – had been disciplined after speaking out about Transforming Health.

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