HSIB Report Found ‘Nearly Half’ Were Procedures Performed On Wrong Patient Or Wrong Body Part

Specialist lawyers are calling for urgent action after nearly 500 serious outpatient health care incidents were reported in a year – including a woman undergoing an invasive gynaecological procedure instead of fertility treatment.

The error which happened when the woman was wrongly identified as another patient was ‘one of 472 serious healthcare incidents reported in England between 2019 and 2020’, a safety report by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) said.

Specialist medical negligence lawyers at Irwin Mitchell are echoing calls from the HSIB to improve patient care. It comes after numbers showed outpatient visits nearly doubled in the past decade.  The report also stated that ‘nearly half’ of the incidents between April 2019 and March 2020 were ‘procedures performed on the wrong patient or on the wrong part of the body,’ reports the BBC.

Expert Opinion

“The findings of this latest investigation are deeply concerning. For one patient to be misidentified and given the wrong procedure is awful. To then hear that similar mistakes have happened to hundreds of people in just a year is truly shocking.

Understandably, hundreds of patients and their families will have a great deal of concern following the HSIB’s findings and it’s clear that urgent improvements are needed.

Entirely preventable incidents, such as this one, are also called never events because they should never happen.

It’s important that lessons are now learned from this and any necessary safety checks are implemented as soon as possible. This is key in ensuring public confidence in the NHS is upheld.

It’s also vital that that those affected now receive the answers and support they need.”
Rachelle Mahapatra - Partner

The woman visited a gynaecology outpatient department for a fertility appointment in July 2019.  Following a number of misunderstandings, including being misidentified as another patient, she was wrongly given an invasive cervical procedure.

She was told what had happened after she had left the clinic.

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