Second NHS trust failed to send thousands of patient and GP letters

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A second NHS trust has been found to have failed to send tens of thousands of letters to patients and GPs. Around 23,000 letters concerning risks to patients or containing actions for patients and GPs were not sent by the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUHT) over several years.The documents were part of 411,000 which were left “unauthorised”, or unissued, on a computer system in 2017, including thousands more which should have been sent out but were later deemed to be of no risk to patient safety.The investigation into the incident at the time found no significant patient harm, but NUHT has said it will review its inquiry.It comes just days after Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust confirmed that around 24,000 documents, including discharge summaries and clinic letters, may not have been sent out over the last five years.Anthony May, chief executive of NUHT, said: “An issue was identified in 2017 related to the authorisation and issuing of documents from our Medical Office system, which included letters to GPs amongst other documents.“As a result, a serious incident was declared and a full investigation was undertaken to establish actions in line with the trust’s governance processes at the time.“Following a clinically-led process, 22,963 documents related to GP correspondence were identified.“GPs were informed, and we worked alongside representatives from primary care to agree which correspondence should be resent, which was completed.“The Serious Incident Review concluded that no significant patient harm has been identified following the incident.“The Trust took positive steps to prevent a similar incident from happening again, including improved communication and training with staff covering