NHS errors 'cause 840 deaths a year'

Friday, 22 July 2005 12:00 AM

More than 800 people die in England's hospitals each year due to lapses in patient safety, a health watchdog claims in a new report.

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) claims more than 500,000 errors are made in the treatment and care of NHS patients each year.

While most do not harm the patients, the NPSA estimated 840 of the mistakes had contributed to patient deaths.

Professor Richard Thomson, the NPSA's director of epidemiology and research, said: "It must be remembered that the great majority of NHS care is safe and effective with over a million patients successfully treated every day.

"However, it is inevitable in complex healthcare systems, treating often very sick patients, that sometimes things can and do go wrong."

Medication mistakes, patient falls and inaccurate record-keeping appear to be the most common causes of the 572,000 patient safety lapses reported.

The lapses were overwhelmingly reported from hospitals, with the rate of GP-care mistakes being less clear, the agency's first report and analysis of NHS errors says.

However, 6.5 per cent of hospital admissions were due to adverse drug reactions from doctor prescriptions, particularly from painkillers and blood thinning drugs such as anticoagulants.

Chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson hopes the report will help identify and implement solutions to risks within the NHS.

Dr Gill Morgan, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said treatment for the "overwhelming majority" of patients goes smoothly, but she welcomed the report providing the first pictures of mistakes, saying the figures are far lower than previously estimated.

She added: "Today's report is certainly no cause for complacency especially since, as this new system for reporting incidents becomes routine and more incidents are reported, we would expect the headline figures of patient safety incidents to increase."

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