NHS drug deaths ‘appalling’

NHS drug blunders may be contributing to 22,000 deaths a year, with “appalling” levels of avoidable harm, the Health Secretary admitted today.

But Jeremy Hunt has promised a revolution in patient safety and a shift away from a “cover-up culture” as research found that mistakes by doctors, nurses and pharmacists amounted to 237million drug errors every year.

He said the scale of the issue was “shocking” and constituted “a far bigger problem” than had been realised. Research led by the University of York showed that more than 70 per cent of potentially harmful errors were made by GPS and pharmacists, often leading to patients requiring hospital treatment.

The study estimates that avoidable drug errors are causing more than 700 deaths a year, and could be contributing to between 1,700 and 22,000 deaths. Almost one in six hospital patients fell victim to a drug blunder, the research suggested. A common cause of

death was when patients were prescribed drugs by GPS which resulted in fatal gastro-intestinal bleeding. The findings come from a review ordered by the Health Secretary, which he publishes today. It suggests that the scale of the blunders costs the NHS £1.6billion a year.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Hunt said the findings were alarming: “The results came as a shock and showed the issue is more widespread and deep-seated than we realised.”

Many errors were detected before they reached the patient, and the majority were minor, he said. But the research still suggested there were an about 66 million incidents a year where an error may affect a patient’s health. “This includes a shocking 1,700 deaths that could be caused by avoidable drug reactions, and may even be responsible for up to 22,000 deaths,” he said.

At a patient safety summit in London today, Mr Hunt will announce reforms to identify and prevent drug errors. The changes will link GPS and hospitals and speed up electronic prescribing, which is known to halve errors. The research found no evidence that Britain was any worse than other countries.