Hospitals that botch a list of eight treatments causing patient harm or deaths, will not be paid under new guidelines.

List of eight blunders the NHS must never commit released by watchdog
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The list includes operating on the wrong side of the body, such as removing the wrong kidney, administering cancer treatment incorrectly which can be fatal and leaving surgical instruments inside a patient after surgery has been drawn up as 'never events' by the National Patient Safety Agency.

The events are potentially harmful or even fatal to patients and are largely preventable.

Health minister Lord Darzi proposed last year that primary care trusts, which pay hospitals for the treatments carried out on patients from their areas, should monitor how often these event occur and from next year block payments for botched care.

A similar system is used in America and has led to a reduction in healthcare blunders.

The Government's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, has reported that 350 errors in surgery are reported every day, including implanting hearing aids in the wrong ear, replacing the wrong knee joint and drilling holes in the wrong side the head.

The never events also include inpatient suicide using bed rails that do not collapse, escape from a medium or high secure mental health service by patients and the deaths of a woman due to haemorrhage after a planned caesarean birth.

How often never events occur will be monitored and reported publicly each year."

No doubt many of us wish the list could be extended! - Let us hope it does some good and that some needless suffering is avoided. The oxygen of publicity should help.