Almost 2,000 'high-priority' NHS medical letters got lost in the system, damning report reveals
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A report in to the biggest loss of NHS medical letters has revealed they included 1,811 “high priority items” such as screening or urgent test results.
The Government spending watchdog today releases the damning report after it emerged 702,000 pieces of paperwork had gone astray last October.
They include 162,000 medical documents that had been mistakenly sent to the outsourcing firm Capita by GPs.
It was feared the lost letters could include patient records, cancer tests, treatment plans and details of changes to the drugs patients should be taking.
It comes after some NHS back office functions were outsourced to Capita including the transfer of some patient records.
The National Audit Office report said: “NHS England has not yet been able to stop GPs from sending clinical correspondence to Capita in error.
(Image: Getty)
“NHS England told us it has continued to receive clinical correspondence from Capita, running at approximately 5,000 to 10,000 items of clinical correspondence a month.
“NHS England told us that it is planning an information campaign to ensure that GPs understand the guidance for handling correspondence for patients that are not registered at their practice.
“NHS England has not yet finalised its process with Capita for handling any correspondence that Capita receives in error.”
Dr Richard Vautrey, GP committee chair at the British Medical Association, said: “It’s no surprise that with the now longstanding confusion, chaos and failures of these support services for general practice, that a small number of practices may have, in good faith, sent on misdirected correspondence to the Capita service.
“Particularly as this would have been the normal arrangements before NHS England tried to cut costs by commissioning this service two years ago.
“What is clear from this investigation is the inability of both NHS England and Capita to get to grips with a problem they have now known about for years.
“This is a further indictment of Capita’s shambolic running of GP backroom services and the real effect its failings are having on the safe care of patients.”
NHS England was due to complete a review during January 2018 to confirm there was no more unprocessed correspondence in the archives.
A spokeswoman said: “The key fact is that there is no evidence that any patient has been harmed by this, and by March every piece of correspondence will have been reviewed and refiled by GPs and the relevant NHS archive.”
A Capita spokesman said: "As the NAO report states, Capita has no contractual responsibility for redirecting clinical correspondence.
"Capita informed NHS England in May 2016 that there was a problem with an unquantified accumulation of clinical notes.
"In October 2016, Capita then formally reported the incident to NHS England and has continued to report on the issue. NHS England has not yet finalised its process with Capita for handling any correspondence that Capita receives in error.”