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Patient Safety Learning

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  1. Patient Safety Learning
    Children say they were "treated like animals" and left traumatised as part of a decade of “systemic abuse” by a group of mental health hospitals, an investigation by The Independent and Sky News has found.
    The Department of Health and Social Care has now launched a probe into the allegations of 22 young women who were patients in units run by The Huntercombe Group, which has run at least six children’s mental health hospitals, between 2012 and this year.
    They say they suffered treatment including the use of “painful” restraints and being held down for hours by male nurses, being stopped from going outside for months and living in wards with blood-stained walls. They also allege they were given so much medication they had become “zombies” and were force-fed.
    But despite reports to police and regulators dating back seven years, and findings by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) that the units were inadequate, the NHS has still handed Huntercombe nearly £190m since 2015-16 to admit children to its mental health beds.
    Through witness testimony, documents obtained by Freedom of Information request and leaked reports, the investigation has uncovered:
    The CQC has received more than 700 whistleblowing and safeguarding reports, including “incidents of concern” and several “sexual safety” concerns. NHS England was notified of 195 safeguarding reports between 2020 and 2021. A 2018 internal report at Meadow Lodge hospital in Newton Abbot (now closed) found staff members using sexually inappropriate language in front of patients. 160 reports investigated by Staffordshire police about Huntercombe Staffordshire between 2015 and 2022. Between March 2021 and 2022, the CQC gave permission for 29 patients to be admitted to Maidenhead hospital after it was placed in special measures. Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 27 October 2022
  2. Patient Safety Learning
    GPs in England may start offering weight-loss jabs to some patients to reduce obesity-related illnesses and resultant pressure on hospitals.
    Wegovy was approved for NHS use after research suggested users could shed over 10% of their body weight.
    The drug blunts appetite, so users feel full and eat less.
    Rishi Sunak said it could be a "game-changer" as he announced a £40 million pilot scheme to increase access to specialist weight management services.
    But experts warn "skinny jabs" - widely used in the US and endorsed by many celebrities - are not a quick fix or a substitute for a healthy diet and exercise.
    NHS drugs watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), says patients can access Wegovy for a maximum of two years via specialist weight-management services.
    The new scheme will test how GPs could safely prescribe such drugs and the NHS provide support in the community or digitally, contributing to the government's wider ambition to reduce pressure on hospitals and give patients access to the care they need where it is most convenient for them.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 7 June 2023
  3. Patient Safety Learning
    GPs in England are being told to see more patients face-to-face as ministers unveil a £250m winter rescue package.
    The emergency funding is being handed to GPs so they can recruit extra locum staff with an emphasis on providing more same-day appointments. Social distancing rules are also expected to be relaxed so that GPs can bring more people into their buildings. 
    It comes amid mounting criticism about the fall in face-to-face appointments since the start of the pandemic.
    Only 58% of patients were seen face-to-face in August - the first full month following the ending of restrictions. That compares with 54% in January and more than 80% before the pandemic.
    Patients have also complained of long waits on phone lines to book an appointment.
    The £250m funding is part of the extra £5bn Covid fund announced last month to help the NHS through to the end of the year, and comes on top of the £12bn set aside for GP services this year.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 14 October 2021
  4. Patient Safety Learning
    The government’s plan to tackle the hospital backlog in England will fail without a fundamental reform in how services work, health leaders say.
    Labour aims to increase the number of appointments and operations done each week by 40,000, to help hit the 18-week waiting time target.
    But NHS Confederation research found that would deliver only about 15% of the extra capacity needed to get back to reaching the target, which has not been hit since 2006.
    It called for a wider transformation of hospital care, including greater use of digital technologies to improve productivity.
    The warning comes ahead of the release of a government review of NHS performance later this week.
    Led by NHS surgeon and independent peer Lord Ara Darzi, the review was ordered by Health Secretary Wes Streeting shortly after the election, to help identify the biggest barriers to improving waiting times.
    Sources close to the review said it would be a warts-and-all report, including criticism about the lack of productivity in some areas.
    There will also be a warning about the state of children's health, and how that has deteriorated in the past decade.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 8 September 2024
  5. Patient Safety Learning
    When Emma decided to try for a baby, she began to come off some of the medicines she relied on to manage her Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. The complex condition affecting connective tissues has left the 35-year-old without a bladder and being fed via a tube into her small bowel. But there were some drugs she couldn’t safely go without. That’s when Emma realised no one could tell her for sure whether those drugs could harm her baby.
    “The vast majority of the information that’s available is like, ‘To be used if there’s no other options, no research done’. And without the medication, I will end up in hospital, so I don’t really have an option but to take it,” Emma says. The lack of information left her feeling “guilt and anxiety”.
    More than 90% of medicines have never been tested in pregnancy, leaving millions of women around the world making this impossible choice: go without treatment or take it without full-throated reassurance from doctors that it’s safe. This year, in the biggest step change in a generation – since the Thalidomide scandal of the 1950s and 1960s – the World Health Organisation (WHO) will begin to work with scientists, doctors and drug developers to change this.
    “People have been scared to treat pregnant women since the thalidomide tragedy,” says Mariana Widmer, a maternal health scientist at WHO.
    “There’s no one single organisation or one individual that can make this change. This change is huge. This takes time,” she adds. “We need collaboration and we need partnerships. And this is what we at WHO would like to do ... bring together all these players at the table and work together to make this change, that’s the only way to do it.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 14 January 2026
  6. Patient Safety Learning
    The official plan to increase access to NHS dental services in England has been a “complete failure”, and some of the government’s initiatives have worsened the crisis, a damning report warns.
    Millions of patients continue to be denied dental care, forcing them to pay for private treatment, build up mountains of credit card debt, or even worse perform dangerous DIY dentistry on their own teeth, the research by MPs found.
    Without immediate and significant changes to fix the “broken” system, there would be no future for population-wide access to NHS dentistry, the report by the public accounts committee (PAC) said.
    “This country is now years deep in an avalanche of harrowing stories of the impact of dentistry’s system failure,” said Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the committee. “It is utterly disgraceful that, in the 21st century, some Britons have been forced to remove their own teeth.”
    He added: “Last year’s dental recovery plan was supposed to address these problems, something our report has found it has signally failed to do. Almost unbelievably, the government’s initiatives appear to have actually resulted in worsening the picture, with fewer new patients seen since the plan’s introduction.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 4 April 2025
  7. Patient Safety Learning
    Funding is being given to around one in six GP practices in England to help them improve their buildings, the government says.
    Around £102m is being provided to expand and modernise surgeries, with work getting under way this summer. The government said it was the biggest public investment in facilities for five years.
    It comes as satisfaction levels with GP service have hit record-low levels and figures suggest two in five GPs are reporting their practices are not fit for purpose.
    Health Secretary Wes Streeting called it a "significant step", but warned it would not solve all existing problems overnight.
    Under the plan, some of the projects will involve converting office space into clinical consulting rooms as well as building new practices.
    Mr Streeting said: "These are simple fixes for our GP surgeries, but for too long they were left to ruin, allowing waiting lists to build and stopping doctors treating more patients."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 6 May 2025
  8. Patient Safety Learning
    You might not have heard of a ‘physician associate’ - and that’s not your fault. They probably won’t tell you. A physician associate walks and talks like a doctor, but they are no replacement for one.
    To become a physician associate you need to complete a two-year postgraduate course or three-year apprenticeship. But despite much less learning than the five years a junior doctor must undergo to be qualified, they are often paid more than them.
    Which is why the government’s plan to flood the NHS with 10,000 more of them over the next 15 years doesn’t make any sense. There’s certainly no money-saving aspect. This is simply another corner-cutting exercise to quickly plug gaps in a struggling NHS that will put patients at risk.
    Far from saving doctors work (their original purpose), they often create more. Physician associates are unregulated so cannot be held accountable for their mistakes, meaning doctors must recheck any critical decisions they make. Critical decisions are made quite frequently in hospitals.
    But they’re not just overstretching doctors and creating more work; they’re harming patients. A recent Daily Mail investigation has found brain bleeds misdiagnosed as inconsequential headaches and lung disease mistaken for a chest infection.
    Doctors say they are “increasingly concerned” by this.
    Read full story
    Source: LBC, 16 October 2023
  9. Patient Safety Learning
    Plans to scrap the four-hour A&E target have sparked a furious backlash from doctors and nurses, with some claiming it is driven by ministers’ desire to avoid negative publicity about patients facing increasingly long delays.
    A&E consultants led a chorus of medical opposition to the move. They pointedly urged NHS leaders and ministers to concentrate on delivering the long-established maximum waiting time for emergency care rather than finding “ways around” it.
    Under the target, 95% of people arriving at A&E in England are meant to be treated and then discharged, admitted or transferred within four hours. But performance against the target plunged to a new record low of just 68.6% last month in hospital-based A&E units as a result of staffing problems, the decade-long squeeze on the NHS budget and the dramatic growth in the number of patients seeking care.
    The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), which represents A&E doctors, was responding to Wednesday’s apparent confirmation by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, that the target  is set to be axed because it is no longer deemed to be “clinically appropriate”.
    “So far we’ve seen nothing to indicate that a viable replacement for the four-hour target exists and believe that testing [of alternatives to the target] should soon draw to a close,” said Dr Katherine Henderson, the President of the RCEM. “Rather than focus on ways around the target, we need to get back to the business of delivering on it.”
    The Emergency Care Association, to which 8,000 A&E nurses belong, said ministers should exercise “extreme caution” in decisions about the target because “it could cause significant detriment to patient safety within our emergency departments if the four-hour target was abolished”. There are fears that patients thought to have only minor ailments could come to harm by having to wait a lot longer than four hours because they also have a more serious condition.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 15 January 2020
     
  10. Patient Safety Learning
    Plans for up to 150 new community diagnostic hubs to tackle the NHS’ ballooning diagnostic waiting lists are included in NHS England ‘blue print plans’ leaked to HSJ.
    The document pointed out the hubs “were highlighted in the phase 3 letter [from Sir Simon Stevens] and will be recommended as part of new service models for diagnostics in the forthcoming [Sir Mike] Richards’ Review of Diagnostics Capacity”.
    It said “at least 150 community diagnostic hubs should be established in the first instance (broadly equivalent to the number of acute hospitals)” although it appears many of these may be temporary facilities.
    The phase 3 letter said systems should mange the “immediate growth in people requiring cancer diagnosis and/or treatment returning to the service by… the development of community diagnostic hubs” among other measures
    The Richards review was commissioned by NHS England in 2019 as it had long been recognised that England has one of the lowest levels in Europe of diagnostic equipment as well as a shortage in facilities and staff. Last month think-tanks warned of significant worsening of cancer outcomes because of the backlog in diagnosis and treatment created by a fall in referrals during the pandemic..."
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 4 September 2020
  11. Patient Safety Learning
    Plans for NHS staff to restrain and detain people experiencing a mental health crisis, instead of the police doing so, are “dangerous”, doctors, nurses and psychiatrists have warned.
    The former prime minister Theresa May has proposed legislation in England and Wales that would change the long-established practice for dealing with people who may pose a risk to themselves or others because their mental health has deteriorated sharply.
    But a coalition of eight medical groups, ambulance bosses and social work leaders said the switch would put mental health staff at risk and damage their relationship with vulnerable patients.
    The row has echoes of the controversy stirred by the Metropolitan police’s decision in 2023 to stop responding to 999 calls involving mental ill health unless they involved a threat to life. The force said the change meant officers were attending crimes such as robberies faster, but mental health groups said they feared it could result in deaths.
    May and two ex-health ministers, Syed Kamall and Frederick Curzon, have tabled amendments to the mental health bill going through parliament which, if passed, would lead to mental health nurses, psychiatrists or other doctors being called out to restrain and detain someone under the Mental Health Act. Those professionals would each become an “authorised person” who is allowed to detain someone under the act.
    But in a joint statement on Monday the eight groups said the risks posed by someone in a mental health crisis meant police officers must continue to always attend. The groups include the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Nursing and the British Medical Association.
    The groups said: “Removing police involvement entirely has hugely dangerous implications, as entering someone’s home without permission is fraught with huge risks and is only currently done with the assistance of police intelligence. Without this, professionals may be entering homes without police help and therefore lacking crucial intelligence that could ensure their safety.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 26 May 2025
  12. Patient Safety Learning
    NHS leaders have warned that Royal Mail’s plans to cut second-class deliveries to two days a week could risk patient safety.
    The changes are part of wider measures announced by Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distributions Services (IDS), including cuts of up to 9,000 routes, which could take more than two years to implement, saving £300m a year. IDS has assured the Royal Mail workforce that there will be no compulsory redundancies and they will request only 100 voluntary redundancies.
    In a letter sent to the Telegraph, executives from the NHS, Healthwatch England, the Patients Association and National Voices said the Royal Mail proposals would increase the cost of missed appointments, which already exceeds £1bn.
    The letter said: “Provisional Healthwatch data suggest that more than 2 million people may have missed medical appointments in 2022-23 due to late delivery of letters, and this will only deteriorate under the proposed new plans.”
    Sir Julian Hartley, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said the proposed delays were “extremely unhelpful”.
    “It’s really important that patients be updated at the earliest opportunity on developments in their care and treatment,” he said.
    “An efficient, punctual postal service remains a key part of that process. At a time when far too many patients already face long delays – the last thing any trust leader wants – anything that adds to that uncertainty, and possibly the worsening of conditions, would be extremely unhelpful.”
    Jacob Lant, the chief executive of health charity National Voices, said: “The proposals being consulted on risk further delaying vital communications and worsening digital exclusion, therefore unfairly widening health inequalities. NHS mail must remain a priority service.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 6 April 2024
  13. Patient Safety Learning
    Implementation of Boris Johnson’s flagship pledge to build 40 new hospitals is “moving at a glacial pace” and is hamstrung by delays and a lack of funding, NHS bosses have warned.
    Some of the construction schemes have already fallen as much as four years behind schedule, while others have been hit by massive cost increases because of difficulties in obtaining sign-off on certain points.
    The new hospitals programme in England is progressing so slowly that bosses of half of the hospitals earmarked to benefit doubt whether they will ever get the money to deliver the promised rebuild, according to a report and survey of health service trust chiefs by NHS Providers.
    One hospital in a rural area had to send seriously ill patients to other hospitals as much as 50 miles away and cancel cancer surgery when an inspection found that the ceiling of its intensive care unit was in danger of collapsing.
    Another hospital has had to close an entire ward for the same reason, while another is plagued with sewage regularly leaking into clinical areas because of the age of the facility.
    One trust chief executive said: “The whole fabric of the building is shot and we need to rebuild. The build was supposed to be completed in 2024 but [we are] now looking at 2027.”
    Another boss said: “We operate 21st-century healthcare from 19th-century buildings – increasingly unsustainable.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 8 July 2022
  14. Patient Safety Learning
    Ministers’ plans to cut the international workforce within NHS England appear overambitious, MPs have said, as a report reveals the health service saved more than £14bn by recruiting doctors, nurses and midwives from overseas.
    Many of the countries recruited from were struggling with staff shortages, and the UK had a moral duty to offer support, rather than simply extracting what it needed, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on global health and security found.
    The group’s inquiry into the benefits and costs of international health worker recruitment heard that the scale of NHS reliance on overseas workers meant the government’s plan to reduce international recruitment to around 10% by 2035 was overambitious.
    “The NHS has not operated at that level for decades,” said Andrew Mitchell, the former development minister who chaired the inquiry.
    Thirty-six per cent of UK doctors and 24% of nurses and midwives were trained elsewhere in the world.
    The number of visas granted to healthcare professionals has fallen sharply in recent years. But overseas staff would be needed “for the foreseeable future”, the APPG said.
    Mitchell added: “We must grow our own workforce. But in a shrinking world, pretending health workforces are purely national assets, is no longer credible. If we benefit from health workers trained overseas, we also have a duty to help strengthen the systems they come from.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 16 March 2026
  15. Patient Safety Learning
    Plans to end the deepening crisis in access to NHS dental care are failing, leaving patients unable to get treatment, according to a warning from the government’s spending watchdog.
    The National Audit Office’s (NAO) damning verdict on the “dental recovery plan” prompted patient groups to voice alarm that people’s struggles with decayed teeth represents “a serious public health concern”.
    A pledge to provide an extra 1.5m treatments in England this year is in disarray amid falls in both the number of dentists doing NHS work and people receiving help from them.
    There is “significant uncertainty” as to whether that ambition will be fulfilled because two key elements of the plan have not been achieved, an NAO investigation found. None of the promised new fleet of mobile dental vans has appeared and £20,000 “golden hellos”, to entice 240 dentists to work in areas of acute shortage, have only produced one extra dentist.
    The plan, launched in February by the then Conservative government, promised that “everyone who needs to see a dentist will be able to do so” during 2024-25.
    However, “based on initial analysis to date, the plan is not on track to deliver the additional courses of treatment,” the NAO concluded.
    Even if the plan did provide what was promised, the NHS would still be offering 2.6m fewer treatments this year than before Covid hit in early 2020, it added.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 27 November 2024
  16. Patient Safety Learning
    Plans to force the NHS to share confidential data with police across England are “very problematic” and could see patients giving false information to GPs, the government’s data watchdog has warned.
    In her first interview, Dr Nicola Byrne, the national data guardian for England told The Independent she has serious concerns over Home Office plans to impose a responsibility on the NHS to share patient data with police which she said “sets aside” the duty of confidentiality for clinicians.
    She also warned that emergency powers brought in to allow the sharing of data to help tackle the spread of Covid-19 could not run on indefinitely after they were extended to March 2022.
    She also told The Independent she had raised concerns with the government over clauses in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill which is going through the House of Lords later this month. The legislation could impose NHS bodies to disclose private patient data to police to prevent serious violence and crucially sets aside a duty of confidentiality on clinicians collecting information when providing care.
    Dr Byrne said doing so could “erode trust and confidence, and deter people from sharing information and even from presenting for clinical care”.
    She added that it was not clear what exact information would be covered by the bill: “The case isn’t made why as to why that is necessary. These things need to be debated openly and in public.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 10 October 2021
  17. Patient Safety Learning
    Anyone with suspected concussion must be immediately removed from football, rugby and other sports and rest for at least 24 hours, under new guidance for grassroots clubs.
    It says the NHS 111 help-line should be called and players should not return to competitive sport for at least 21 days.
    The UK-wide guidelines are aimed at parents, coaches, referees and players.
    Its authors say a "culture change" in the way head injuries are dealt with is needed.
    "We know that exercise is good for both mental and physical health, so we don't want to put people off sport," Prof James Calder, the surgeon who led the work for the government, said.
    "But we need to recognise that if you've got a head injury, it must be managed and you need to be protected, so that it doesn't get worse."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 2 May 2023
  18. Patient Safety Learning
    The NHS staffing crisis will be solved only if doctors and nurses get more flexible about their job descriptions and break down barriers between roles, according to Rishi Sunak’s health adviser.
    Bill Morgan argues that training times for doctors and nurses may have to be reduced, and suggests developing “sub-consultants” and entirely new medical professions, He wants ministers to create an Office for Budget Responsibility-style body to predict future workforce needs.
    The Treasury has held down the numbers of doctors and nurses Britain trains to prevent “supply-induced demand”, which encourages people to seek appointments that are not needed, Morgan argues.
    Chronic shortages of qualified staff are the biggest problem facing the health service, which has more than 130,000 vacancies. Morgan acknowledges that this means “some of the government’s key manifesto commitments will not be met”, citing the promise of 6,000 extra GPs.
    Sunak said this week that the government was “thinking creatively about what new roles and capabilities we need in the healthcare workforce of the future”. He urged the NHS to shed “conventional wisdom”.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 24 November 2022
  19. Patient Safety Learning
    London pathology providers are “running too hot” to give enough support the large system hit by a cyber attack last week, HSJ has been told.
    HSJ has learnt that all the capital’s pathology services have now been approached to help Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital after the IT systems for their provider Synnovis went down, the pressure on the capital’s labs and technical issues limited what help could be given.
    But one senior manager told HSJ: “Many trusts are keen to help but their hands are tied. The difficulties are that so many medium-sized NHS labs are already running hot and have not got the capacity."
    HSJ was told there was significant clinical risk in primary care as well.
    Routine tests that might have picked up something important are not happening and one manager said: “Patients in primary care include those in nursing homes – blood tests and test for infections can be the only way to work out why a frail patient is deteriorating.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 17 June 2024
  20. Patient Safety Learning
    A baby died after maternity staff repeatedly missed chances to intervene to save his life, an official investigation has found.
    Giles Cooper-Hall was just 16 hours old when he died after a catalogue of errors in the maternity care of his mother, Ruth Cooper-Hall, at Derriford hospital in Plymouth.
    A Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) report into the incident has exposed how inexperienced and overstretched staff failed to carry out proper checks, recognise there was an emergency or seek help from senior doctors until it was too late.
    It comes just weeks after the independent Ockenden report into more than 1,800 cases revealed serious failings in the maternity care provided at Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS Trust.
    It revealed how Ruth Cooper-Hall, then aged 37, was not personally seen by a consultant when she went into labour in October last year, despite recommendations made in the interim Ockenden report published in December 2020.
    The HSIB report also suggested Giles’ death could have been avoided if staff had known about the care plan for his mother’s labour. Instead, vital messages were not passed on, with the investigation finding this was likely to be because the staff responsible were “distracted” by other tasks.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 10 May 2022
  21. Patient Safety Learning
    Thérèse Coffey has been appointed as the new health and social care secretary.
    Ms Coffey, previously work and pensions secretary, has been appointed to the role by the new prime minister, Liz Truss.
    A close ally of Ms Truss, Ms Coffey has also been appointed as her deputy prime minister. 
    The new prime minister, in her first speech in the role, said that putting “our health service on a firm footing” was one of her “three early priorities”.
    She pledged to improve access and build “hospitals”. 
    Ms Coffey said this evening her priorities were “ABCD”, representing “ambulances, backlogs, care, doctors and dentists”.
     
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 6 September 2022
  22. Patient Safety Learning
    A hospital serving the prime minister’s constituency has been issued a warning notice by inspectors over poor infection control, including staff having to share two small toilet cubicles for changing.
    The Care Quality Commission (CQC) announced it has issued the notice to The Hillingdon Hospitals FT today following an unannounced inspection in September.
    It comes after the watchdog placed urgent conditions on the provider following a coronavirus outbreak among staff at Hillingdon Hospital in August. At least 70 members of staff had to isolate, some of whom had tested positive for covid.
    The watchdog said it found there had been improvements, but that “further work is needed”.
    The CQC’s inspection report, published today, said there were no staff changing rooms available for people to change in and out of their scrubs, and that they were sharing two small toilet cubicles at the start and end of shifts.
    These were not cleaned with an “enhanced” cleaning schedule, it added, and the lack of separate changing rooms “caused a risk of cross-contamination”. However, senior leaders were aware of the risk and were seeking ways to improve access to changing areas for staff.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 4 December 2020
  23. Patient Safety Learning
    A series of concerns about serious incidents at a mental health trust are being investigated by the Care Quality Commission, with a referral also made to the police, HSJ has learned.
    HSJ understands that various incidents at Black Country Healthcare Foundation Trust have been raised with the Care Quality Commission by whistleblowers.
    According to a well-placed source, one of the alleged incidents involved alleged inappropriate sexual behaviour, and this has been referred to West Midlands police.
    Other complaints are understood to include staff using mental health inpatients’ rooms to sleep in, and an information governance breach in which patient information was shared with members of staff who did not need to receive them. It is understood this was in an email raising patient safety concerns.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 17 January 2023
  24. Patient Safety Learning
    A major investigation into the care of more than 200 NHS cases has been expanded to include a "small number" of heart patients, confirms Sussex Police.
    The force is looking into allegations of medical negligence at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton between 2015 and 2021 as part of Operation Bramber.
    Officers are examining claims about preventable deaths and injuries in the trust's neurosurgery and general surgery departments.
    University Hospital Sussex NHS Trust, which runs seven hospitals across East and West Sussex, said it would continue to "fully co-operate" with the police investigation.
    Initially, 40 deaths were investigated as part of Operation Bramber, which was launched by the police in 2023, after both a coroner and two consultant surgeons at the hospital raised concerns.
    A spokesperson for Sussex Police said: "As a result of a further witness coming forward during the course of the investigation, police are now starting to review a small number of cases relating to cardiothoracic surgery at the Royal Sussex County Hospital."
    And added: "Cases relating to neurosurgery and general surgery at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton between 2015 and 2021 have started to be reviewed by specialist consultant surgeons who are totally independent of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust.
    "They have been commissioned to provide expert medical opinion on individual cases, and their reports will be considered alongside information obtained from our police enquiries to determine whether any cases will be taken forward and if so, which ones."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 15 April 2026
  25. Patient Safety Learning
    Detectives investigating hundreds of deaths at a hospital have identified 24 suspects.
    An independent panel previously found 456 patients died after being given opiates inappropriately at Gosport War Memorial Hospital between 1987 and 2001.
    Families of those who died have been informed a new criminal investigation, led by Kent Police, has begun sharing files with the Crown Prosecution Service for charging consideration.
    Operation Magenta, which follows three previous investigations by Hampshire Constabulary that resulted in no prosecutions, said 21 people were being investigated for alleged gross negligence manslaughter and three for alleged health and safety offences.
    Kent Police Deputy Chief Constable Neil Jerome said the investigation was "one of the largest and most complex of its nature in the history of UK policing".
    "It will be the CPS’ decision as to whether or not any criminal charges are brought in relation to these cases," he added.
    Representing some of the families affected, Emma Jones, from Leigh Day Solicitors, said the news was "small comfort" to her clients - who she praised for showing "immense patience and fortitude" while the investigation has been carried out.
    "They have already waited many years for answers into the deaths of their loved ones and progress in this investigation does not appear to have been fast," she said.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 10 October 2024

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