The Austin Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, accidentally declared about 200 of its patients dead in one day.
The hospital’s operator, Austin Health, said the mistake occurred July 30 after a change was made to the templates the facility sends to physicians after a patient’s discharge. Instead of discharge information for the 200 patients discharged that day, death notices were sent to doctors.
Urgent: Do You Approve Or Disapprove of President Obama's Job Performance? Vote Now in Urgent Poll
The hospital has apologized and said patient care was in no way affected.
"We apologized unreservedly to affected clinics who, for the most part, were very understanding about the error," a statement read.
The Age reported that an electronic file was saved to the wrong location, resulting in death notices getting generated and faxed to physicians instead of the normal discharge notices.
State premier Denis Napthine, a member of Australia’s Liberal Party, told The Age that Austin Health had started to address the error.
"The Austin have apologized to the people concerned and have taken every action as quickly as possible to remedy this mistake," Napthine said.
Daniel Andrews, a member of the Australian Labor Party,
told Sky News Australia that the error occurred because of an overworked health system that is in critical condition.
"They obviously can't take that back. It's symptomatic of a health system that is in crisis, a health system where emergency departments are full," Andrews said. "You talk to any nurses, any doctor, any paramedic, any patient or their loved ones, and they'll tell you that we shouldn't settle for the health system the way it is now."
Urgent: Assess Your Heart Attack Risk in Minutes. Click Here.