As some of you may have heard on the Today programme this morning the current situation in relation to patient safety alerts is nothing short of scandalous. Patient safety alerts are issued by the National Patient Safety agency to health trusts about problems that repeatedly result in injury or even death to patients which could have been avoided. Under the alerts a set of actions needs to be completed by a set deadline.
Although problems with this system were identified in an earlier report from AvMA in February 2010 as at 7 June 2010 63% of health trusts had failed to comply with at least one alert and 29 trusts had not complied with 10 or more alerts.
In relation to an alert issued on the 20 May 2004 there were still 6 instances of it not being complied with. Since a number of trusts have proved themselves capable of 100% compliance with patient safety alerts (and they are clearly to be congratulated for this) what is happening to the trusts in default? One trust for example has 23 alerts outstanding.
AvMA’s report highlights not only the problems with individual trust but with the whole system of monitoring and regulating compliance with these alerts.
For anyone with an interest in this area a full report can be found at www.avma.org.uk
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