NHS Trusts in England may be covering up mistakes, says a government review into patient safety incidents.
The data shows that out of 141 Trusts, 29 are not registering the expected number of incidents, representing one fifth of all hospital Trusts in England.
While there may be innocent reasons for low reporting, the review said that it may also be a sign of “poor” safety culture.
The data has been published as part of the government’s ‘Sign up to Safety’ campaign, launched in March this year.
The plans involve a number of measures to improve patient safety, including a website which will allow patients to view the performance of hospitals across the country.
The website, hosted by the NHS Choices site, will also reveal which NHS Trusts have been rated as poor for open and honest reporting.
Those with low rates of incident reporting will be followed up by officials from NHS England.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt hopes the campaign will reduce the amount of serious mistakes made in the NHS, including bedsores, blood clots and medication errors.
He hopes this will prevent 6,000 avoidable deaths by 2016 to 2017. Mr Hunt said:
“The NHS is leading the world in achieving new safety standards but the battle to reduce avoidable harm is constant.
“Unsafe care causes immeasurable harm to patients and their families, and also costs the NHS millions in litigation claims.”
Sir David Dalton, who is leading the safety campaign, said: “Healthcare carries inherent risk and while healthcare professionals work hard every day to reduce this risk, harm still happens.
“Some is unavoidable but most isn’t. Sign up to Safety seeks to reduce this harm and is a unique opportunity for us to all work together to listen, learn and act to make a difference.”
Have you been harmed because of poor patient safety?
If you have been harmed because of poor patient safety, please get in touch with us to discuss your options.
Share Article With:
|
|
|
|
|
|
