According to the Guardian, NHS organisations will have to detail every mistake, accident and incident that leads to a patient suffering pain, trauma, injury or death. Previously the system has been one of voluntary reporting of patient safety incidents to the the National Patient Safety Agency. But this has had serious criticism as it obviously makes for skewed statistics and allows for errors to be ignored and go unreported.
Lord Patel, the NPSA’s chairman said, “Patient safety needs to improve and making reporting mandatory will help that happen.” However, he also stated that he did not believe that this would lead to an increase in medical negligence claims.
It might surprise you to hear that, but the reason for this is, although all errors must now be disclosed to the NPSA, there is no legal duty on the medical practitioners to inform patients, or relatives of a patient who has died, about a mishap.
This has led to heavy criticism that the new procedures do not go far enough to protect the interests of patients and it certainly rings true. If a mistake has been made which has caused pain and suffering or, in the worst of cases, death, then shouldn’t the individual or their family be made aware of that fact.
When taken in this context it looks to be something of an empty gesture to make the reporting of errors compulsory and then not disclose that information to the people it will affect most of all, the patients. Adopting such a system potentially deprives patients of an opportunity to claim compensation for an injury they have suffered through no fault of their own.