patient safety report

Six monthly patient safety instance report published

Nearly 6,000 suffer serious harm or contributors to their death by NHS mistakes

Patient safety whilst in the care of NHS professionals can not always be taken for granted, improved reporting where there has been NHS negligence means incidents can be reviewed, lessons learned and improvements made.

The six monthly 'Organisation Patient Safety Incident Reports' for the period of October 2008 to March 2009 which shows incidents that were reported to the National Patients Safety Agency (NPSA) have now been published.

The report has details of patient safety issues from frontline staff in NHS Trusts or Local Health Boards which can be compared to target the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Over the reported six months, NHS negligence has resulted in 5,717 patients suffering serious harm or dying.

The results come from across 98 percent of the trusts in England; with the report showing that overall these trusts had around 459,500 patient safety issues as a result of NHS medical negligence.

The 'Organisation Patient Safety Incident Reports' showed a 12 percent increase on reported incidents on the previous six months, though this is probably due to a 3 percent increase in trusts submitting reports and better reporting procedures from those already reporting their incidents.

A percentage breakdown of the severity of harm patients suffered: -

0.4 Contributed to the death of the patient.
0.8 Contributed to causing the patient severe harm.
6.2 Contributed to causing the patient moderate harm.
26.6 Contributed to causing the patient low harm.
65.9 Caused the patient no harm but should not have occurred.

Martin Fletcher Chief executive of the NPSA said: “More reports do not mean more risks to patients. Indeed quite the reverse. These data are sound evidence of an improving reporting culture across the NHS. Frontline staff are more likely than ever to raise safety concerns much more openly."

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