A study led by Austin Health in Melbourne has found around one-fifth of medication supplied to public medical, surgical wards, and emergency departments (EDs) in Melbourne had not been administered to patients. The study, led by David Taylor, Director of Emergency Medicine Research at Austin Health, concluded that in 2019 around 19.2 percent of medication to medical and surgical wards and EDs in four public hospitals in Melbourne were not administered to patients. “Considerable quantities of medications are not accounted for in public hospitals,” Taylor and colleagues wrote after examining the medication supply and administration data for 20 frequently used medications. The four hospitals examined in the study were Austin, Box Hill, Footscray and Frankston Hospital in Melbourne, Victoria, with an estimated overall cost of the missing medication to be around $27,000; around 0.02 percent of the 2019 medication budget of $124,979,795 for the included wards in the four hospitals. The …