Colchester Hospital Trust has most 'never events' in England
Incidents included wrong implants, and objects being left inside patients
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Your support makes all the difference.A hospital trust in Essex breached more serious patient safety rules than any other institution in England over the past year, NHS figures have shown.
Some nine errors deemed so serious they should never happen – or "never events" - occurred at Colchester Hospital University Trust between 2014-2015.
This figure was up from one in 2013 to 2014.
As many as 420 "serious incidents" also took place at the trust in the past year.
The provisional statistics released by NHS England reveal that more "never events" happened at its facilities than any other trust in the country.
Mistakes included one "wrong implant", five counts of items being left inside patients’ bodies, and three separate "wrong site" surgeries.
The damning results come as Essex Police continue to investigate whether staff have committed any criminal offences in connection with allegations that cancer data was manipulated at the trust, BBC News reported.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, slammed the results as "utterly unacceptable."
“Incidents of wrong site surgery' and 'retained foreign objects' are utterly unacceptable and pose a huge risk to patient safety,” she told BBC News.
"A visit to hospital can be highly stressful at the best of times and at the very least, patients deserve to be treated in a safe, regulated environment."
She hoped that "vital lessons are learnt each time to ensure that they are not repeated".
A spokesman for Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust said in a statement seen by Heart: "We care for hundreds of thousands of patients every year and we usually get it right, which is why there has always been so much goodwill for us in the community and why in 2014/15 we received 23 plaudits for every complaint.
"However, health care can be very complex and we do sometimes make mistakes. In those circumstances, it's essential that we're open and honest about them and, importantly, use them as learning opportunities that will help us to improve our services and make them safer.
"The Trust, therefore, proactively encourages all staff to be open and to report incidents, and has a 'no blame' policy so that learning can take place to prevent recurrence."
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