Poll: Do you have faith in your local NHS trust?
One in five NHS trusts may not be being open and honest about the numbers of patient safety incidents that occur in their hospitals, health officials have said.
Twenty per cent of acute NHS trusts in England have been flagged by health officials for under-reporting patient safety incidents, including events that cause severe harm or even death.
A new tool is being unveiled by the Department of Health (DH) and NHS England which enables the public to see how well their hospital is performing on key safety measures.
The new safety website shows that there are "concerns" about incident reporting at one in five acute trusts, a DH spokeswoman said.
Concerns are raised when a trust may not be reporting enough incidents, not reporting these events often enough or where staff feel that the organisation is not responding to incident reports as well as they could, she said.
Each trust listed on the new site is given a rating for their reporting culture. Just 17.7% were deemed to be good, 61.7% are OK and 20.6% were rated as "poor".
The trusts are given the rating based on five different categories; potential under-reporting of patient safety incidents, possible under-reporting of incidents leading to death or severe harm, potential under-reporting of accidents which resulted in no harm, the organisation's reporting to the National Reporting and Learning System and how staff feel the trust responds to safety incidents.
We want your views - do you have faith in your local NHS trust?
