Inappropriate care in medicine

n a recent article in the MJA, Duckett and colleagues presented “a model to measure potentially inapproI priate care in Australian hospitals”. The article was a summary of their report for the Grattan Institute. However, with regard to hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT), the summary concealed fundamental flaws in their source data collection and their methods that have resulted in misleading conclusions. Neither Duckett and colleagues nor the accompanying editorial cited the two source documents on which the articles were based. A critical reading of the source documents, crossreferenced with the relevant Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC) reports, has identified errors in method and interpretation that invalidate the findings of Duckett et al.