28.06.17
Doctors slam ‘disgraceful’ mail backlog that could harm 1,800 patients
Doctors and politicians alike have branded it a disgraceful and “colossal blunder” that almost 2,000 patients may have been harmed after an NHS contractor developed a staggering backlog of over 700,000 pieces of unprocessed clinical correspondence in its warehouse.
NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) – a company set up as a joint venture between the Department of Health and Sopra Steria – was accused by the National Audit Office (NAO) in a scathing report of failing to stick to its contractual responsibility to process misdirected correspondence, instead letting items pile up in boxes.
While the watchdog estimates that almost 1,800 people may be at risk of harm as a result, the real figure could be much higher, given that one-third of GPs have yet to assess whether unprocessed items sent to them could have damaged patients.
The lost correspondence likely includes patient records, cancer test results and other diagnostic tests, child protection notes, treatment plans and details of changes to what drugs patients should take, according to a Guardian investigation.
NHS SBS originally told NHS England and the Department of Health that it had discovered a backlog of letters in March 2016, when the pile stood at around 435,000 items of unprocessed correspondence. This later rose to 709,000 after the organisation found four more boxes in its archives.
The results of the investigation were sharply criticised by the BMA, with its GP committee deputy chair, Dr Richard Vautrey, saying: “It is a disgrace that this service failed so badly that patient care was being compromised. Patients will rightly be angry that this private company, contracted by the NHS, has failed practices and patients to such an extent.”
Outgoing leader of the Liberal Democrats Tim Farron also did not mince his words, calling the debacle a “colossal blunder” that has put almost 1,800 people in harm’s way – “and this figure could be much, much higher”.
“This disaster left patient data, which includes blood test results and cancer screening, languishing in a warehouse,” said the outgoing party leader. “People in the department must be held accountable for this shoddy affair.”
The Department of Health chose in April 2016 not to alert Parliament or the public to the incident after concluding it didn’t have an “accurate picture” of the scale of the problem.
But its spokeswoman issued a short response in light of the NAO’s findings, arguing that patient safety “has been our first priority and no cases of harm have been identified to date”.
“Alongside NHS England, we have been very mindful of appropriate transparency while working to make sure this does not happen again,” she added. “Last year, the health secretary updated Parliament and the Public Accounts Committee was informed.”
The health secretary himself has also been accused of being “asleep at the wheel” while NHS SBS allowed the backlog to blow up.
But Jeremy Hunt, who sits on the company’s board, didn’t share in the blame, telling the House of Commons yesterday that it was “totally unacceptable” and “incompetent” that SBS had mislaid hundreds of thousands of pieces of paperwork.
He welcomed the news that no patient harm has been identified to date and assured that full clinical assessments of the situation would happen by the end of the year.
“The NHS is a large organisation. It has a huge number of contracts with both the public and private sectors, and no government of any party can ever guarantee that there will be absolutely no breach of contract,” Hunt told MPs.
“However, what we can do is ensure that we react quickly when there is such a breach, which happened on this occasion, and that we have better assurance than we had on this occasion. I assure the House that the appropriate lessons will be learned.”
An NHS England spokesman admitted that the organisation had been “deeply concerned to be belatedly informed” about the backlog by NHS SBS in March last year, but guaranteed that it had immediately set up a team to manage the incident.
All relevant correspondence has now been sent back to GPs for review and SBS is no longer performing this mail redirection service, which has since been taken in-house.
A spokesman from the company told national press: “Today’s NAO report highlights a number of failings in the mail redirection service provided to NHS England. We regret this situation and have cooperated fully with the NAO in its investigation.
“All of the correspondence backlog has now been delivered to GP surgeries for filing and NHS England has so far found no evidence of patient harm.”