Unpublished patient safety reports exposed

A number of Freedom of Information requests from BBC Panorama has uncovered serious patient safety issues that are being buried in confidential hospital reports.

The requests revealed 111 reports, written by medical royal colleges, which NHS trusts have a duty to share. The BBC says that it received 80 reports, but only 26 had been shared in full with regulators, and 16 published.

NHS Trusts have been required to publish summaries of external reviews, and share them with the regulator, ever since the 2015 Morecambe Bay maternity scandal, in which 11 babies and a mother died.

FoI requests were sent to all NHS trusts in the UK requesting any Royal College reviews of services in the last five years. The colleges set standards of care and can be commissioned to review how a health care provider is performing.

Of the 80 reports released to the BBC, just 16 are in the public domain, and only 26 were shared in full with the regulators, including the Care Quality Commission. In another 22 cases the regulator was only aware of the review or had only seen part of it. The BBC says that 65 of the 80 contained potential or actual patient safety concerns.

Though the BBC had been told about 111 reports, the Royal Colleges told Panorama they had carried out about 260 reviews in the same period.