Melbourne:  A misplaced mouse click has been blamed for issuing death notices of more than 200 living hospital patients who had been discharged the previous day.

Erroneous death notices were generated for every patient discharged from AUSTIN HOSPITAL in Melbourne and the forms automatically faxed to each patients GP.

It occurred in the early hours of Wednesday, 30 July 2014.

The AUSTIN HOSPITAL has apologised and traced the problem to “human error”.

A computer file was saved to the wrong location, substituting the death notice for the patient discharge form.

“AUSTIN Health automatically notifies GPs when their patients are discharged from hospital,” its communications director said yesterday.

The fault was recognised within hours and all affected GP clinics were then immediately notified.