10 patients died in our hospitals after errors were made in their medication DRUG MISTAKES BY HOSPITAL GROUP

AT least ten patients have died in our hospitals over the last four years because of mistakes made by staff when administering drugs, the Irish Daily Mail can reveal.

Official figures released to the Mail under a freedom of information request also show that thousands of less serious errors were recorded over the same timeframe.

Records of medication errors are logged with the health service’s National Incident Management System (NIMS).

Figures show that a total of 15,362 ‘medication incidents’ were recorded for the years 2013 to 2016 inclusive.

The largest number of incidents were logged in 2015, with 7,232, although a note to the records presented to the Mail explained that the spike in 2015 related to a large batch of incidents being uploaded onto NIMS from another HSE record system.

There were 2,589 medication incidents recorded in 2013; 2,328 in 2014, and a total of 3,213 last year.

The Mail can also reveal where the mistakes were made, by hospital group.

The largest number of incidents occurred in the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group, where 6,767 incidents were recorded over the four years – more than a third of all incidents nationwide.

This is not surprising given some of our largest hospitals are part of this group, including St James’s and the Coombe in Dublin and the Midlands General in Naas.

The HSE said that there had been ten deaths over the fouryear period because of medicine mistakes, but it could not tell the Mail who made the fatal mistakes.

‘The number of medication incidents created on NIMS in the years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 where the outcome at the time of incident or the type of injury was death is equal to ten,’ the HSE said.

‘NIMS does not capture information in relation to the person who made the error.

‘It captures the injured party and the person who reported the incident.’

But Irish Patients’ Association chief executive Stephen McMahon yesterday claimed that the true number of deaths could run into hundreds per year, given the potential longterm effects of being given the wrong medication.

Mr McMahon said figures from the health safety watchdog Hiqa show there are tens of thousands of patients discharged every year with ‘potentially severe medication prescribing error’.

There are no figures collated here to track how many of these could have led to death, but using UK and American comparators, Mr McMahon believes the rate is in the region of 700 to 800 medicine mistake deaths a year.

Mr McMahon said: ‘A recent Hiqa report stated that 6% of hospital discharge prescriptions were found to have a potentially severe medication prescribing error. Applying this nationally, it equates to approximately 37,500 patient discharges meeting this profile. Drawing again on the Hiqa report, 20% of hospital re-admissions are medication related.’

He added: ‘I believe the NIMS is under reported and fear the kill rate from preventable medication error could exceed 1,000 patients, many multiples of road vehicle fatalities, many multiples less attention, and far less accountability.’

The latest statistics from the US show there were 250,000 preventable deaths, both clinical and medicinal, in the US health system last year.

Working on the assumption that our population is about one 70th the size of the US, with similar demographics this would give us 3,500 preventable deaths per year.

Mr McMahon estimates that up to 20% of these could be medicine errors.

He believes that when consultants from the Irish Association of Emergency Medicine say there are close to 400 deaths attributable to waiting lists, it is reasonable to say that there are around twice that from medicine errors – and this excludes mistakes outside of hospitals.

Fianna Fáil health spokesman, Billy Kelleher, said: ‘It raises concerns about prescribing. We have to be sure that clinicians have the expertise and the support and the training available to them.

‘Obviously, support of colleagues is important, to try to make sure that they are not working under such pressurised circumstances where it is more likely that mistakes will be made.’

A HSE spokesman noted the commencement last year of the Hiqa Medication Safety Monitoring Programme and said: ‘Findings from recent Hiqa inspection reports show that hospitals are committed to actively progressing the medication safety agenda.’

Of death rates in hospital groups he said care must be taken in analysing data.

He said factors that could influence data included that ‘some hospitals have a higher or lower proportion of patients with other medical conditions attending than others and this may influence outcomes’.

He also said that differences in access to medical care prior to arrival at the hospital could influence data.

He added: ‘Therefore, it cannot be concluded that a high mortality rate is indicative of poor quality care.’

Comment – Page 14 ferghal.blaney@dailymail.ie

‘Potentially severe error’ ‘Concerns about prescribing’