Hundreds of serious incidents recorded at struggling small trust

One of the country’s smallest trusts recorded 277 serious incidents over a two-year period, HSJ can reveal.

Delays in treatment, missed diagnoses, adverse media coverage and “suboptimal” care were among the hundreds of serious incidents reported at the struggling Isle of Wight Trust from the start of 2018 and up to November 2019.

There were also two never events in 2019 — a “wrong site” surgery and an incident in which a patient was mistakenly connected to an air flow meter, rather than an oxygen supply.

The trust said the level of incidents did not neccessarily reflect poor care, and did not mean patients had come to harm.

The trust was placed in special measures in April 2017 after it was rated “inadequate” by the Care Quality Commission due to “significant” concerns over patient safety. It was upgraded to “requires improvement” in September 2019, but remains in special measures. 

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Source: HSJ, 22 January 2020