Patients go missing each week

Patients under the care of NHS Tayside go missing every week from the region’s hospitals.

In some cases, children under 16 are among those who go missing and, in at least one case, a patient died while the health board was looking for them.

Figures, released by NHS Tayside following a Freedom of Information request, show there were 262 patients reported missing in the past three years as of July this year – equal to seven a month.

Of those patients, 10 were under the age of 16.

The board said that all 10 of the younger patients were found “the same day”.

All 262 patients were recorded as having been found and returned.

There were fewer than five fatalities linked to the 262 missing patients, although NHS Tayside could not say how many.

A spokeswoman for NHS Tayside said: “NHS Tayside takes its duty of care to patients very seriously and has a policy in place, which has procedures for staff to follow in the case of a missing patient. This policy was developed in partnership with Police Scotland.

“The data collected within NHS Tayside does not separate the categories of “absent” and “missing”.

“A person may be absent for various reasons, including a late return to hospital from a visit home or an appointment, but that episode would be included within the data in the missing persons category.”