Medical errors- new campaign aims to reduce deaths and costs

A safety drive is to be launched by the government's health watchdog in the face of "alarming" figures on the harm patients suffer in hospital and elsewhere. Various studies, some using US data, estimate that there is a one in 300 chance of a hospital patient dying as a result of medical error. One in 10 is estimated to suffer harm, of whom a third suffer serious harm, while studies suggest that 600 errors are made a day in primary care with more than one in 10 prescriptions containing errors.

"It is clear that when you put those figures together, along with some of the individual issues we have investigated [such as avoidable deaths in maternity units and from hospital-acquired infections], then there is a lot still to be done on safety," said Anna Walker, chief executive of the Healthcare Commission, which acts as the healthcare inspectorate.

"There is a long way to go to really embed the right kind of attitude, and questioning and learning from events in the healthcare culture."

Ms Walker stressed the problem was far from unique to the UK. The US had launched a drive to tackle tens of thousands of preventable deaths in its hospitals, with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement estimating that there are 15m incidents of medical harm in US hospitals a year.

"But it is time we had a really sustained drive, through the regulators, on safety issues," Ms Walker said.

In the coming year, the commission would check more rigorously on the hygiene code aimed at reducing hospital-acquired infections, intervene where data showed high rates of MRSA and C. difficile infections, and look more closely at the use of controlled drugs and of radiation for both diagnosis and treatment.

But it would also be putting pressure on the boards of health organisations, which were responsible for standards, to ensure that they "monitor, analyse, and learn lessons from safety episodes" in their hospitals, "and then act on them", she said.

From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/90f7172e-d03e-11db-94cb-000b5df10621.html

The Healthcare Commission's renewed interest in the harm that afflicts NHS patients is appluaded by Health Direct.

On 4 Nov 05 Health Direct posted: NAO- NHS accidents cost £2bn and up to 34,000 lives
when according to a report by the National Audit Office, around a half of incidents in which NHS hospital patients are unintentionally harmed could have been avoided, if lessons from previous incidents had been learned.

Whilst reporting has improved at the local level, at the national level progress on developing a national reporting and learning system has been slower than envisaged in the Department of Health’s 2001 strategy “Building a safer NHS for patients”.

Earlier on 26 July 05 Health Direct posted: NPSA publishes first NHS patient safety data analysis when it found that more than half a million patients every year suffer as a result of medical errors or incidents while in NHS hospitals. The first public analysis of patient safety data in England and Wales is published by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA).

From this analysis we estimate that there would be approximately 572,000 incidents and 840 deaths reported to the NRLS each year from acute hospitals.