Safety drive launched after a fifth of hospitals revealed to be ‘covering up errors’
One in five hospitals is covering up errors, a government review has suggested.
The national ratings, released today as part of the Department of Health and NHS England’s drive to improve safety in the NHS, show that 29 out of 141 trust were not registering the expected number of safety incidents.
The figures show that 20.6 per cent of NHS trusts have been rated as poor, with 17.7 per cent assessed to be good, and 61.7 per cent deemed to be okay.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said it was important hospitals were “open and honest”, and that patients had a right to know about problems with reporting.
He asked trusts to join the Sign up to Safety campaign and draw up plans to halve “avoidable harm” such as medication errors, blood clots and bedsores by 2016-17.
Hospitals will be rated more highly for reporting and properly investigating errors, than for attempting to cover them up.
Each hospital will be rated on five different categories, including reporting levels of major and minor safety incidents.
Under the new system, hospitals will fare worse for reporting suspiciously low numbers of incidents — especially if they report few incidents which resulted in no harm patients — the easiest to cover up.
Earlier this month Mr Hunt warned of 12,000 avoidable deaths in the NHS every year, which he said was “the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing out of the sky every fortnight”.
Estimates suggest that adverse effects due to medical errors cost the NHS almost £800 million a year.
Hospitals that improve their safety records will be told they will be able to secure lower insurance premiums under NHS schemes, because they can expect lower negligence pay out in future.
Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that this was not about “humiliating” anyone.
“The NHS is there for patients and if a hospital has a problem with its reporting culture, I think patients have a right to know that,” he said.
Safety drive launched after a fifth of hospitals revealed to be ‘covering up errors’
One in five hospitals is covering up errors, a government review has suggested.The national ratings, released today as part of the Department of Health and NHS England's drive to improve safety in the NHS, show that 29 out of 141 trust were not registering the expected number of safety incidents.
Safety & Health Practitioner
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