The NSW Government has attempted to blame alarming new figures about serious errors in its public hospitals on the alleged fact that it keeps better records than other states.

That may be true, but it misses the point. The relative performance of NSW hospitals compared with those of other states is not the most important aspect of the statistics.

Far more important, and troubling, is the actual number of mistakes and the severity of their consequences for the patients involved.

According to the Productivity Commission figures, NSW recorded 59 "severely harmful incidents" in 2007-08, sharply up from 32 reported the year before and well ahead of the next-worst state, Victoria.

Reported incidents included procedures on the wrong patient or body part, items left in the body after surgery, medication errors and patient suicides.

Considering the huge numbers of patients seen in the state's hospitals the number of incidents may seem relatively small, but it is important that each case is properly examined and addressed. The events may be simply bad luck, but enough issues have been publicised in recent times to suggest that some problems might be systemic.

A handful of cases involving grave surgical errors by seemingly relatively inexperienced doctors have received some attention in the Hunter, for example. That may point to a need for better supervision and some scrutiny of training and recruitment procedures.

One or two particularly trouble-prone medical practitioners may inflate the whole hospital system's error tally while at the same time drawing attention to the broader question of professional accreditation and self-regulation.

Persistent errors may also reflect staffing problems, resource issues or inadequate failsafe systems in a hospital.

Instead of being defensive about the figures, the State Government should use them as a tool to help it explore the notoriously opaque public health system, to find problems and to solve them.