Patient safety agency admits problems with its pilot scheme

Preliminary figures from a pilot system for reporting adverse incidents in the NHS were released this week with a warning that the raw data were “unreliable and not sufficiently robust for a government publication.”

Data collected by the National Patient Safety Agency show that more than 27000 adverse incidents have been reported over the past nine months, far fewer than expected from international studies on adverse incidents. However, there were substantial problems with the pilot.

Professor Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer for England, said: “Fifty to sixty per cent of the data …