Hospital 'kills off' 200 patients in error death notices

A major Melbourne hospital has accidentally sent out more than 200 patient death notices to those patients' general practitioners.

The GPs were sent a fax by Austin Health in the early hours of July 30 to say their patients had died following a hospital visit, News Corp reports.

The health service contacted the GPs within hours to apologise for the mistake but at least one GP had already contacted a patient's family member to express their condolences.

The Australian Medical Association Victoria said the incident may have been distressing to GPs who often had long term relationships with patients and their families.

Austin Health notifies GPs automatically when their patients are discharged from hospital.

But on this occasion someone had updated a template notifying GPs of his or her patient's death and then accidentally saved it as a standard template.

This mistake caused the death notice template to be sent to GPs rather than the discharge notice.