A Melbourne hospital, Austin Health, sent out death notices to more than 200 living patients. The notices of patients who were actually discharged the previous day were faxed to each patient's GP on July 30. The error was noticed later the same day. The notices were generated in error, mistakenly killing off hundreds of living patients.

A News Corp report said that in the early hours of Aug 13, the error was corrected by the health services, but it took several hours. Before they had contacted the GPs, at least one GP had contacted one family member of the mistakenly killed living patient to express their heartfelt condolences.

To those GPs who maintained a long-term relationships with their patients and families, this incident might be distressing, noted the Australia Medical Association Victoria. The AMA Victoria's President, Dr Tony Bartone, said the error was unacceptable. He explained the importance of introducing a strong and robust IT systems for health services.

Usually, when patients are discharged from the hospital, the health service sends a notification to the GPs automatically. A template with notification to the GP of her or his patients death was updated to the system and was accidentally saved as a standard template. This error led to the death notices being sent out to the GPs instead of the notices for discharge.

The spokeswoman for Austin Health, Taryn Sheehy, said that they apologised to the affected clinics, and the clinics were understanding about the error.

The Victorian Opposition said that Austin Health had apologised, but this incident is a sign that the hospital system is in crisis.

On Aug 14, Labor leader Daniel Andrews said that they can't take back the death notices and this is an incident which is a symptom of a health system that is in crisis. He asked the people to talk to the nurses, doctors, paramedics, patients and loved ones, and they would agree that the public shouldn't accept the current situation of the health system.