Action urged on hospital error deaths

The Victorian Opposition says the State Government must do more to reduce the number of deaths caused by mistakes made in the state's hospitals.

A new report reveals that in the last financial year 29 Victorians died as a result of preventable mistakes made by hospital staff.

Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey says that in the past four years there has been no significant reduction in the number of errors being made.

"It's not enough just to collect the figures," she said.

"One has to be sure that action has been taken in response to the reporting of these catastrophic events."

But Dr Alan Wolf, who heads the State Government's clinical risk management review committee, says changes are being made to reduce the number of serious mistakes being made.

"There are 103 events like this in one year and 1.2 million admissions to public hospitals," he said.

"So these events are very very rare and there's an enormous amount of action being taken to reduce the rate of these events."