NHS England to publish quarterly lists of 'never events'

NHS England to publish quarterly lists of 'never events' Events that should never happen, such as surgical instruments left inside patients' bodies, will be listed by hospital trust

The NHS in England will publish quarterly lists of "never events" – so-called because they should never happen – broken down by hospital trust, it has emerged.

The admission came as part of a response to a freedom of information request from the magazineHealth Service Journal, which sought a list of serious, largely preventable patient safety incidents which are never supposed to happen in the NHS.

• Should our attitude towards 'never events' change?

Examples include "foreign objects" such as surgical instruments or swabs being left inside patients' bodies, patients being fitted with the wrong implant, and surgery on the wrong body part – or the wrong person.

NHS England has collected the data from trusts since the start of the 2013-14 financial year. There were 299 such events last year and Labour point out that this has doubled from 2011-12 when there were 163.

Dr Mike Durkin, director of patient safety at NHS England, said: "Annual data on the number of never events recorded nationally in different types of care settings has been published for a number of years. NHS England intends to begin publishing more detailed data on never events on a more regular basis very soon, providing more frequent information on the numbers and kinds of never events that occur in the NHS as part of its wider commitment to transparency."

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, pushed the idea that such events were a "silent scandal" and NHS England's move came as the health service's hospital supremo warned that tensions between Whitehall and the NHS had led to feuding at a time when budgets were coming under an unprecedented squeeze.

Chris Hopson, head of the Foundation Trust Network (FTN), described relations between the Department of Health and NHS England as akin to "warring parents".

"Sometimes those of us in the NHS look up and think: this is warring parents who ought to get their act together so we can do what we need to do in the NHS."

Sources close to the health secretary dismissed the remarks as "unsubstantiated opinion".

Labour seized on the comments, with the party's health spokesman Andy Burnham saying: "Confusion reigns and we have an NHS at war with itself. In the midst of the biggest financial challenge in its history, no one knows who's in charge or who is responsible for what. It is political mismanagement on a grand scale." Guardian