Poor Implementation of Patient Safety Alerts
Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA) Finds ‘Poor Implementation and Governance of Patient Safety Alerts in Some NHS Organisations in England’
Patient safety alerts are official notices which are issued by NHS England. These are designed to give advice to NHS bodies to prevent specific accidents or incidents that occur within the NHS and that cause harm of death. The AvMA has created a recent report – created & written by Dr David Cousins which highlighted that the AvMA has been concerned for a long period of time of the effectiveness of the system to protect patients.
Lengthy amounts of time that are taken between warnings being issued and implementation are putting patients at needless risk as well as monitoring compliance. The major concerns that were highlighted is that it is unclear as to whether the NHS are expected to and will continue to implement suggestions raised by patient safety alerts. There are also concerns raised over how risk is managed after alerts are issued and if notifications of death or injury are given after extensive periods of time following an alert being issued.
The Report Combined With Recent News
The report is highly concerning regarding the way that NHS England handles and implements recommendations to protect patients after patient safety alerts are issued. This also follows the news on 20th January 2020 that the NHS faces huge clinical negligence legal fees bill. The news recently reported that NHS England faces paying out £4.3b in legal fees in order to settle outstanding claims further highlights concerns that are raised.
Should you require more information on making a medical negligence claim or clinical negligence claim then you can get in contact with a member of our expert medical negligence solicitors today. You can find the report from the AvMA by following the hyperlink below: