Thousands of patients are the victims of medical errors that could have been avoided if safety were given a higher priority in the NHS

Thousands of NHS patients suffer avoidable medical errors, says Healthcare Commission
article in the Telegraph

Extract 1:

"The report said only half of NHS trusts comply with all safety standards and there has been little improvement.

Errors that have led to patients being harmed include incorrect diagnosis, wrong doses of medication, surgeons operating on the wrong part of the body and paperwork going missing.

The wide ranging report covers all aspects of healthcare in England and highlights a number of areas of significant improvement in the NHS, particularly around deaths from cancer and heart disease and huge reductions in waiting times.

Demand for healthcare has increased dramatically, the NHS has higher levels of funding than ever before, and the health of the nation is improving, the report said.

However, the last annual report before the Healthcare Commission is subsumed by the Care Quality Commission, the report focuses on patient safety and the lack of progress in the last five years.

The report said too few incidents are reported to the National Patient Safety Agency with particular problems in primary care where doctors and nurses report almost no errors although the majority of patient care is delivered by GPs."

"Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of Council at the British Medical Association said: "The overall picture in this report is of major improvements to standards of care. We applaud the efforts of NHS staff in reducing the amount of time patients have to wait, and improving the quality of the care they receive.

Extract 2:

"Any errors are regrettable but there are millions of contacts between the NHS and patients every day. It is inevitable that, in a very small proportion of these, care falls below the highest standards. Doctors want to get rid of unacceptable variations in quality, but we need to be careful to analyse and learn from the causes of low performance rather than jumping to conclusions or simply adopting a blame culture."

Martin Fletcher, Chief Executive at the National Patient Safety Agency, said: “Good reporting is the cornerstone of patient safety. Safety cannot be improved without a range of valid reporting, analytical and investigative tools that identify the sources and causes of risk in a way that leads to preventative action. The National Reporting and Learning System has a vital role to play in supporting NHS organisations to identify risks to safe patient care. Patient safety needs to be everyone’s responsibility.”"

If you read the whole article you will see that the foolish Dr Meldrum's response is so glaringly at variance with the contents of the report as to be gross lies.

Couple the reluctance of doctors and hospital trusts to admit to errors and to report them, with the long-standing culture of cover-up by the medical profession as a whole, and add to that the widespread practice of further victimising the victims of medical negligence and you may begin to comprehend the vast scale of medical malpractice and avoidable suffering in this country. Then add further the difficulties of even getting a complaint acknowledged/received by the system: the Healthcare Commission has 'gatekeepers' who prevent Prof Sir Ian Kennedy and his fellow Commissioners from even seeing many of the complaints submitted by those who have suffered/are suffering from the mistakes/negligence of the system...

We are very badly served by the expensive, poorly performing NHS and our vastly overpaid doctors, and the NHS Complaints Procedures routinely add to the suffering of complainants/victims and are a national scandal.