Prescription medication
561. Hon Dr Brian Walkerto theparliamentary secretary representing the Minister for Health:
I thank the minister for her response to my question of last week, on deaths resulting from prescription medication, though I confess that I was hoping for a little more detail. To that end, might I refer the minister to the ten sentinel categories that all states and territories are required to report to the Commonwealth, and note that Victoria has an 11th of its own making.
(1) How many deaths due to properly prescribed, properly administered medication have been reported to the Commonwealth by Western Australia over the last five years?
(2) If the answer to (1) is that the data is not captured under the ten sentinel categories, would the government be open to adding an 11th that would capture it, perhaps along the lines of that introduced in Victoria, which I believe includes "All other adverse patient safety events resulting in serious harm or death"?
(3) If not, why not?
Hon Pierre Yang replied:
I thank the honourable member for some notice of the question. The following has been provided by the Minister for Health.
(1)–(3) There have been zero sentinel events due to properly prescribed, properly administered medication since 2020–21.
