Hospital Acquired Complications (HACs) are associated with profound consequences for patients and significantly increase hospital costs and length of stay. The use of clinical risk mitigation strategies is therefore important and embedded in processes of hospital care. However, prevention resources are lacking and there are shortcomings in their clinical use. The publication of Australian HAC incidence data is delayed and incomplete. This creates barriers to clinicians, hospitals and their networks evaluating the incidence of HACs in local reporting and benchmarking it externally against broader service provision to improve patient care.
In addition, the monitoring of processes of care related to HACs is not standardised, can be highly variable across hospitals, and results are under-reported. This leads to the inability of clinicians and hospitals to evaluate and compare performance and identify specific areas requiring improvement. The inclusion of HACs in the publication of quality and safety data is not mandated or advocated for in legislation, frameworks or strategic plans This further obstructs benchmarking, quality improvement efforts and funding. To improve patient access to and understanding of HAC information, consumers must be involved in the co-design of how data is presented and accessed.
