A new study has found that Māori are a third more likely to be admitted to hospital with treatment injuries and 43 percent more likely to be admitted because of healthcare complications than non-Māori.
The research reviewed hospital records from the Lakes and Bay of Plenty regions over five years (2014 to 2018) and covered around 300 treatment injury patients and almost 14,000 people admitted with complications, all over 50 years of age.
Co-author and pharmacist Dr Joanna Hikaka said their research showed older Māori were more likely to experience adverse outcomes than non-Māori.
"There is always the potential for adverse outcomes to occur when you receive any healthcare.
"We believe it is important for the New Zealand health system to routinely report adverse outcomes resulting from healthcare and respond when there are differences in outcomes between different groups in the population," she said.
Treatment injuries, also known as medical misadventure, include the likes of unintentional cuts and punctures during surgery, while healthcare complications include infections and reactions to medicines.
Although older Māori were more likely than older non-Māori to be admitted to hospital because of these issues, Māori living in the same regions were less likely to have a treatment injury-related ACC claim.
Lead author and a junior doctor at Christchurch hospital Dr Gina Svensen said the researchers wanted to see a transparent, publicly available monitoring and reporting system so that the health system and providers could respond.
"Our findings highlight inadequacies in the provision of quality healthcare for Māori and prompt further investigation of this at a national level.
"The health system reform provides an opportunity to improve monitoring and reporting of adverse outcomes in healthcare in New Zealand."
More than half of healthcare complications for both Māori and non-Māori related to medications. An example of this might be when a medication used to treat high blood pressure was too strong and led to very low blood pressure, falls, and injury.
"As we get older, the way medicines act and react in our body's changes. Medication reviews that involve discussions between patients and their health professionals can reduce the risk of adverse outcomes and are an important part of ongoing care particularly as people age," Hikaka said.
