The frightening news is that, if you are a 'customer' of one of the UK's
National Heath Service Hospitals you may well suffer as a result of one
of the thousands of clinical mistakes which are made every month.
During a six month study by the National Patient Safety Agency carried out
in 28 NHS hospitals, 24,500 "adverse incidents" were uncovered. One estimate
suggests that as many as one in ten people going into hospital could fall victim
to an error made by medical staff or suffer unexpected reactions to drugs or
other treatment.
If the figures are to be believed, this would extrapolate out to over a million
incidents every year, with hundreds causing the death of patients or severe
health problems.
The trouble with the raw data however is that it is not clear how reliable
it is. This has been the first comprehensive survey and the ground-rules have
not been well established.
Some hospitals have reported 'trivial matters' such as the wrong types of
bandage being used and occurrences of patients slipping, whilst others
have reported fewer incidents. It is clear however there are many serious
incidents which can have catastrophic results for patients.
In particular, the pilot study identified more than 300 incidents which occurred
during childbirth. This is an area deserving of scrutiny, as over one half of
all costs involved in compensation and damages claims made against the NHS
arise as a result of brain damage caused by mistakes made during childbirth.
No matter how alarming these figures are, it is necessary to put them into
perspective, but unfortunately, due to the way the data has been collected, it
is not easy to do this.
The National Patient Safety Agency has made it clear that the data is in no
way robust, but intends to publish its detailed findings, openly, as soon as
the results are audited.
Had the data been audited before any results had been announced, the
public would have been left better placed to judge the figures fairly, and the
government wouldn't have suffered another incredible embarrassment.
When it was announced that the preliminary figures were available, it was
widely reported that, Alan Milburn, Health Secretary, had tried to
prevent their release to avoid creating alarm.
A Department of Health spokesman insisted it would be "irresponsible" to
publish preliminary, and possibly unreliable data, in an official document.
It is certainly true that releasing preliminary and unreliable figures would
be a mistake, and could well cause public alarm, if it was not pointed out
that the results were preliminary, unreliable and did not necessarily paint
a true picture of the NHS as a whole, however, no one would expect this to
be done. As a result, Milburn's intentions have been interpreted as an attempt,
once again, to keep bad news about our hospitals, and failures of government
health policy, away from public scrutiny.
What we need now is a comprehensive study carried over another six month period,
involving all NHS hospitals, with clear guidelines as to what should be reported
and how it is classified. Only then will we have reliable data upon which we can
judge the performance of the NHS and determine how safely it treats its
patients.
It is worrying that the pilot study was not organised this way, so that reliable
data could be obtained. The way the study was undertaken only fuels the minds of
the conspiracy theorists who suggest that the initial data was deliberately
intended to be unusable, so subsequent studies could impose limits and
categorisations on the data collected in order to turn future reports into
favourable ones; much as has been done in recent years with unemployment
figures.
One thing is certain; not only do patients have to suffer the risk of
legionnaires disease, MRSA super-bugs and antibiotics which don't work whilst
staying in hospital, but they face the risk of serious health problems and
death as a result of medical mistakes during their stay.
To anyone who has stayed in hospital recently, and has been a victim of
medical error, incompetance, stupidity or plain blunder; this will come as no
surprise.
