Half a Million U.K. Patients Are Hit Yearly by NHS Blunders

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Half a Million U.K. Patients Are Hit Yearly by NHS Blunders

Daily Mail said:
(London)

August 28, 2006

Hundreds of thousands of patients are killed by medical blunders each year, it has been revealed.

Last year, a staggering 526,599 suffered harm at the hands of doctors, nurses and ambulance staff, and 2,159 died. Mistakes recorded by the National Patient Safety Agency range from errors in prescriptions and operations to lost medical records and misdiagnoses and patients going “missing” while being transferred between wards.

Katherine Murphy, of the Patients' Association, said, “All those deaths were preventable. People go into hospital to get better. One can have some sympathy with staff because we know they are working under huge pressure but someone must be held accountable.”

A second report reveals more than 300 families a year sue the Health Service after errors during childbirth leave their babies brain-damaged. Many are unable to walk, talk or feed themselves, though their intelligence may be unimpaired.

Figures from the National Health Service Litigation Authority show the bill for compensation and legal costs reached £175 million last year. The full cost, including lifetime care, is likely to be much higher.

The Department of Health said the figures represented a tiny proportion of the millions-of patients who use the NHS each year. A spokesman added, “Our top priority remains the safe, prompt and reliable provision of quality healthcare. When mistakes occur, we need to enhance our ability to recognize them and learn from them.”

In relation to the childbirth figures, the Department said it had invested heavily in maternity services and “giving birth in the UK is now safer than ever.”

Meanwhile, “life coaching” for Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt and a string of other Cabinet Ministers is costing the taxpayer millions of pounds, it emerged last night. Hewitt and her senior civil servants are being helped to deal with the pressures of government.

Psychologists are paid £250 an hour to help stressed-out ministers and mandarins “download” their problems and unearth their ‘emotional intelligence.”

Life coaches have also been dispatched to No. 10, the Home Office, Foreign Office, Cabinet Office, Department for Transport and the Treasury. Ministers have been assigned personal mentors who act as a “critical friend” and a “helping hand.”

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott, who uncovered Whitehall’s use of life coaches, said, “Ministers should not need psychological coaching to do their job. If they really do, the fat fees consultants charge must come out of their own pockets, not the public purse.”

A Department of Health spokesman refused to say how much money had been spent on life coaches, adding that the program was in its “early days.”
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