Oldham PCT has failed to implement patient safety alerts according to Pearson Hinchliffe medical negligence solicitor.

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NHS Trusts Fail to Implement Safety Alerts

<< News archive February 2010

22nd February 2010

A national charity has accused the NHS of failing to implement safety alerts designed to prevent further accidents and injuries to patients.

Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA) forced the Department of Health to release statistics, using freedom of information requests, that showed around a quarter of all NHS trusts had not complied with safety alerts issued by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA).

AvMA's Chief Executive Peter Walsh said, "Lives are being put at risk."

2,124 safety alerts were revealed to have not been adhered to, covering subjects like hand hygiene, patients undergoing brain surgery accidentally having burr holes drilled in the wrong side of their head, safety of blood transfusions and risk of children being injured or killed by parents with mental heath conditions.

NHS bodies have to report to the Central Alert System (CAS) when the recommended actions have been done. However, despite the fact that carrying out the recommendations is one of the top ‘core standards’ that all NHS trusts in England are supposed to meet, there is no official checking procedure.

Mr Walsh went on to say, “There is no system for monitoring implementation of alerts, or of intervening with NHS trusts who have not implemented actions from patient safety alerts.”

Medical Negligence solicitor, John Pollitt of Oldham firm Pearson Hinchliffe said, “Any system for alerting risk areas is valueless unless there are sufficient levels of compliance. The poor levels of response by Trusts in our area are truly alarming. There is just no excuse for failing to heed a warning which could save lives. For families who have lost loved ones this news will be hard to bear.”

The Local Picture

Nationally, 80 NHS trusts had not put into practice 10 or more separate alerts. Locally, the data showed that the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trusts, which includes the Royal Oldham Hospital, was found to have failed to implement 11 alerts, Oldham Primary Care Trust had 5 incomplete alerts.

Worse still, Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust was found to have failed in 19 instances, giving it the 10th worst score in the country.

Mr Pollitt, who is an AvMA accredited solicitor specialising in representing patients across the North-West who have suffered medical mistakes, added, “I was saddened to see that of 300 compliers of the report Tameside Hospital was in the top twenty-three of worst compliers.”

The Department of Health responded by saying that it will issue a formal reminder to the health service to record and action alerts and update the system in a timely fashion.

This story was also reported in the Oldham Chronicle