NHS errors costing 2,000 lives a year
More than 2,000 patients died in English hospitals last year due to NHS errors, according to a government watchdog.
Figures from the National Audit Office (NAO) reveal there were 980,000 patient incidents reported last year, but the study pointed out that as many more incidents go unreported, the real figures were likely to be much higher.
Most involved minor incidents that caused no long-term harm, but the study suggests that more than half the accidents could have been avoided if lessons had been learnt from previous incidents.
The errors cost the NHS over £2 billion a year in lost beds and compensation claims, and NAO chief executive John Bourn recommended that more be done to move away from “a blame culture” and encourage more medical staff to report incidents.
“There needs to be significantly faster progress at the national level in ensuring effective evaluation of numbers, types and causes of incidents,” he said.
“And lessons and solutions must be better evaluated and shared by all organisations with a role in keeping patients safe.”
Typical mistakes included medication errors, faulty equipment and patient accidents but those most often reported were patient falls, with more serious incidents being less likely to be disclosed.
And a survey of 99 NHS Trust revealed there were 2,081 reported deaths in English hospitals between April 2004 and March 2005 – more than double the figure given by the National Patient Safety Agency in July, who said that figure stood at 840.
Conservative MP Edward Leigh, who is chairman of the public accounts committee, insisted that more needed to be done to encourage staff to report accidents, and to make sure lessons were learnt.
“No public health system should tolerate a failure to learn from previous experience on this scale,” he said, adding: “It is unacceptable that any NHS staff member might be too afraid to report things going wrong.”
This was a view shared by Lib Dem health spokesman Steve Webb who said that “a more open culture” in the NHS was needed.
“This report is extremely disturbing. While no healthcare system is perfectly safe, much more must be done to reduce the number of mistakes in hospitals.”
“Staff must be encouraged to report more incidents to the National Patient Safety Agency. This will help hospitals learn from their mistakes and design safer systems in the future.”
He pointed to the airlines as a good example of an industry leading ahead on incident reporting.
“The NHS must follow the example of the airline industry by rooting out any problems with the system which are accidents waiting to happen,” he added.
