Rudd's fervour fades on health

ACCORDING to the Productivity Commission, 2007-08 was a bad year in NSW hospitals for accidents which harmed or even killed patients. There were 59 so-called sentinel incidents - severely harmful events due to systemic failures - in NSW, 40 per cent of the national figure, from the state which accounts for only 30 per cent of hospital admissions. The state government, though, says the poor result - a big turnaround from the previous year - was simply because this state now collects better statistics than other states, through the Clinical Excellence Commission. Well, perhaps.