Patient safety issues in the NHS
- In the UK, about 10% of inpatient episodes result in errors of some kind, of which half are preventable.
- Of 8 million admissions to hospitals in England each year, more than 850,000 result in patient safety incidents which cost the NHS over £2 billion annually in extra hospital days.
- An average of 10,000 people suffer serious harm each year through mis-identifying, mis-prescribing or wrong site surgery.
- Last year alone, 1702 people were harmed through mis-identification and 1136 were involved in waiting list errors.
- A study carried out at Charing Cross Hospital found that patient ID checks were only being done 17% of the time. When bar-coded wrist bands were implemented they were checked 81% of the time.
- £900million of medical staff time wasted looking for assets, equipment, results etc per annum.
- "Our vision should be an NHS that is safe, as safe as it possibly can be, giving patients and public the confidence they need in the care they receive", Lord Darzi
- Former health minister, Lord Hunt, said of the technology: "Auto identification is not a new technology - we've all been used to bar codes in supermarkets for years. But to reap the benefits in healthcare everyone needs to work to agreed standards. We are recommending that both industry and the NHS should use the GS1 System for coding, and I am delighted to be able to announce that GS1UK will be providing membership and support to NHS organisations who want to move forward on this."