Safety standards: Patients are significantly more likely to die in hospital from medical negligence than they are to die in a plane crash, the Minister for Health has said.
She said patients had a one in 300th chance of dying in hospital from medical negligence compared with a one in three millionth chance of dying in a plane crash.
In many instances the mistakes made in hospitals were as a result of simple things like not listening to patients and their families.
In cases detailed at a recent meeting she attended in Geneva, she heard how the death of a child in the US could have been avoided and a serious operation wouldn't have been performed on a man in the UK if their families had been listened to.
Ms Harney made her comments at a conference on patient safety in Dublin yesterday.
The conference also heard that research by the Irish Health Services Accreditation Board (IHSAB) had found much room for improvement in safety standards in many Irish hospitals.
One in five hospitals were found to have no emergency plan and 65 per cent of them were just "partially compliant" in this regard.
Some 14 per cent of hospitals did not have proper risk management procedures and another 50 per cent were just partially compliant with this requirement.
The findings were presented by Róisín Boland, chief executive of IHSAB, who said that in the area of emergency planning both inside hospitals in the event of flooding, for example, or external planning, no hospital was fully compliant with the required standards.
"The big issue that brought people down on this is the internal disaster plans. They weren't there. They were absent in most of the organisations," she said.
"The other area with the major disaster plans is they are not tested... or they were due for renewal or the plans weren't signed off," she added.
Furthermore, Ms Boland said, while there were a lot of policies, procedures, guidelines and protocols in hospitals, they were not always standardised and a lot of them were found to be in draft format.
The statistics, she said, which were gathered over a two-year period, will be published in the organisation's next annual report.
She said that several hospitals had been making progress since this information was gathered.
As yet unpublished research, carried out in conjunction with the National University of Ireland, Galway, indicated the issues identified as problematic had been addressed by many hospitals, she said.
But this research would also show 9 per cent of hospitals had made no progress in making improvements in significant risk areas.
A further 45 per cent had made just some progress, 25 per cent had made significant progress and 21 per cent had completed the improvement works recommended.
IHSAB is the safety and quality standards board for the Irish health service.
Some 80 per cent of hospitals have signed up voluntarily to try to meet its internationally recognised standards.