NHS spends £14.7bn a year treating patients in England hurt by care mistakes, says report.

The NHS is forced to spend a “staggering” £14.7bn a year treating people who have been harmed by mistakes during their care, a report reveals.

And a stark north/south patient safety divide is apparent in England, with medical negligence causing twice the death and disability in the north-east than in London.

The report, by Imperial College London, commissioned by the charity Patient Safety Watch, found that the safety of the care patients receive had fallen during the last two years, with errors leading to 820 preventable deaths annually.

The authors include surgeon and former health minister, Prof Lord Ara Darzi, who produced a major NHS report for the current government highlighting avoidable patient deaths.

Lord Darzi said there had been “alarming declines” in 12 key metrics of patient safety in England since 2022, including maternity care, where there are growing stillbirth rates, babies dying during, or soon, after birth and women during childbirth.

Ara Darzi, co-director of Imperial’s Institute of Global Health Innovation, which wrote the report, said: “Our analysis highlights a troubling increase in neonatal and maternal deaths, with Black women disproportionately affected.”

He urged ministers and NHS managers to take “immediate action” to improve maternity care. The Royal College of Midwives said staff shortages, including of specialist midwives, were a key reason for the recent deterioration in women’s experiences during pregnancy, labour and afterwards, a decline which reviews by other organisations have also identified.

The report also found that there is a widening gap between the performance of the NHS compared with that of the best-performing Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries on deaths from treatable causes, such as sepsis and blood clots.

If the NHS did as well as the top 10% of OECD nations, there would be 13,495 fewer preventable deaths every year, compared with the 12,675 there are in England.       

Rates of hospital superbug Clostridium difficile (C diff) rose by 54% between 2018-19 and 2023-24.

The report authors said that, compared with the rest of England, the north has the highest proportion of NHS trusts at which more than expected patient deaths occur. The proportion of trusts in the north with such fatalities has risen from eight per cent two years ago to 14%.

In addition, rates of what is designated “the adverse effects of medical treatment”, death and disability caused by a procedure or other care, are twice as high in the north-east than London.

Chief executive of patient safety charity, Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA), Paul Whiteing, said: “This report shows the staggering costs involved in having to treat patients harmed through medical care. That, together with the wide regional disparities in avoidable harm, should mean that the focus of the government’s promised 10-year NHS plan, expected in May, should be on increasing patient safety.

Acting NHS ombudsman, Rebecca Hilsenrath, said: “I am still seeing a rise in investigations about maternity care, which suggests that, despite considerable investment and reviews into service failings, things are far from improving.

“There have been successive inquiries and reports into maternity care and sadly no real change. The safety and wellbeing of women is being put at risk due to the same mistakes being made.”

But she added that a “defensive NHS leadership and culture sadly surfacing time and time again in our own investigations” suggests that NHS bosses do not take lessons onboard when errors occur.

The urged ministers to drive through “a cultural shift” in the service’s attitudes to mistakes. She said: “We need an NHS that prioritises accountability, transparency and patient-centred care and which listens to and welcomes patients’ concerns as a resource for learning rather than as a reputational threat.”  

NHS England declined to comment on the report’s main findings. A spokesperson said: “NHS staff are working exceptionally hard to deliver safe patient care, and we are focused on ensuring every part of the health service is working together to manage demand and prioritise patients with the most urgent needs.