We Need an Independent Patient Safety Commissioner

Facing up to the reality of medical harm in Aotearoa New Zealand

The Health Consumer Advocacy Alliance has asked the Government to establish an independent Patient Safety Commission to help protect New Zealanders from suffering from avoidable, preventable harm in our health system.
  • The four co-founders of the HCAA have all experienced significant harm in our health system. Every day we are in touch with New Zealanders from all walks of life who have also been harmed when seeking treatment. In 2023 we published our risk of harm report: Are Our Medical Harm Reporting Systems Effective? Are People Safe? In that report we found that many people have been harmed or have died due to intractable systemic failures that have not been properly addressed for decades. Robust harm reporting systems ensure that patients are kept safe. However, there is no evidence at all that patient harm is being identified and successfully monitored, with explicit action taken to stop harm when it occurs and to prevent further harm. While some medical harm is being reported there is no consistency in what is being reported, and these reports seem to disappear into the ether, with no transparency regarding follow-up and action. This is exacerbated by a failure of all health entities to identify and track practitioners who are repeat offenders in causing harm to multiple patients. No-one in Aotearoa New Zealand is competently tracking individual practitioner harm. One of our recommendations in the report was the establishment of an independent national Patient Safety Commissioner who would focus on preventing patient harm by:
  • truly representing and giving weight to the consumer voice; analysing the structure of the health system and the reporting systems and improving the way in which medical harm is
  • reported and acted upon;
  • and providing a “fence at the top of the cliff” that would reduce the
  • incidence of medical injury and harm.
Click on the following links to find out more: Watch our oral submissions to the Parliamentary Health Select Committee and read the transcript... Read our submission in support of our Parliamentary petition asking for the establishment of an independent Patient Safety Commissioner... Find out what our petition asked for and follow it's progress on the Parliamentary website. An Independent Patient Safety Commissioner: the missing piece of the puzzle! Read our blog... Read our April 23 press release... Newsroom: Calls for patient safety advocate as medical regulation delayed NewstalkZB: Petition seeks to prevent harm in the health sector, backed by former Heath NZ Chair Where is the independent voice in our health system? England has the world's first Patient Safety Commissioner; find out more here...
From left: Hūhana Lyndon, Hon Jan Tinetti, Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, Charlotte Korte, Sue Claridge,Ricardo Menéndez March, Denise Astill.
In April 2024 we launched a Parliamentary petition setting out our request for an independent Patient Safety Commissioner. We presented the petition to MPs at Parliament on the 27th of June. Below you can find links to more information about the petition and why a Patient Safety Commissioner is so important for ensuring the safety of New Zealanders in the our health system.