NHS mailing blunder put 1,788 patients at risk - and Health Secretary kept it quiet

Jeremy Hunt kept quiet for months about a ‘major blunder’ which saw more than 700,000 letters to NHS patients mislaid, some of which contained cancer diagnosis, treatment plans and blood tests, it emerged today.

The health secretary learned in March 2016 that hundreds of thousands of NHS letters had been left to pile up in warehouse by NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS), which is co-owned by the Department of Health.

But a new report by the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed that Mr Hunt ‘decided not to alert Parliament or the public’ to the crisis even though it was known as early as December 2015 that the letters contained ‘clinical correspondence’ and staff had already binned 35 sacks.

The NAO discovered that more than 1,700 patients could have been harmed by not receiving their letters. Overall, NHS England and NHS SBS discovered 709,000 items of unprocessed mail which had been steadily increasing since 2011.

Yet when Mr Hunt finally informed parliament via a two paragraph written statement on July 21 2016, he made no reference to patient safety or the shocking scale of the problem. He simply said there had been ‘an issue with mail redirection service.’

"This was a colossal blunder, which has put 1,788 people in harm's way - and this figure could be much, much higher,” said Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron.

"This disaster left patient data, which includes blood test results and cancer screening, languishing in a warehouse. People in the Department must be held accountable for this shoddy affair."

GP leaders said the situation was ' a disgrace.'

The NAO report also pointed to the conflict of interest created by the fact Mr Hunt oversees the NHS and also sits on the board of NHS SBS, which is half owned by private company Sopra Steria.

Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth called for an apology from Mr Hunt, branding the incident ‘a total scandal’ and a ‘staggering catalogue of mistakes.’

"The Secretary of State needs to explain to the public how he got himself into this conflict of interest, why the oversight of the company went wrong, and why he failed to pick up this string of mistakes for so many years,” he added.

The problem first came to light in 2011, when NHS SBS inherited a backlog of clinical correspondence from primary care trusts in the East Midlands. Initial checks found around 8,000 pieces of mail but by 2014 that figure had grown to 205,000.

In June 2014, a review by NHS SBS highlighted the clinical risk to patients, and the following month an administrator wrote several emails to senior managers warning that the figure had reached 300,000.

In August the same administrator warned bosses that the letters were being destroyed which included ‘clinically urgent’ correspondence, but it wasn’t until December 2015 that staff began a thorough investigation into what was in the letters.

The NAO report concluded: “Senior managers within the NHS SBS primary care services business unit knew about the clinical risk to patients in January 2014 but it did not develop a plan to deal with the backlog.”

Auditors discovered that staff deemed the mail ‘a lower priority than other work as there were no performance indicators attached to it.’

NHS England and the Department of Health were informed in March 2016, but "the Department of Health decided in April 2016 not to alert Parliament or the public to the incident", the NAO found. A spokesman for the Department of Health claimed they were trying to find a fuller picture of patient harm.

Dr Richard Vautrey, BMA GP committee deputy chair said: "It is a disgrace that this service failed so badly that patient care was being compromised." 

NHS England estimates the cost of the incident will be at least £6.6 million for administration alone, the report added.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "As the NAO report highlights, patient safety has been our first priority and no cases of harm have been identified to date.

"Alongside NHS England, we have been very mindful of appropriate transparency while working to make sure this does not happen again. Last year, the Health Secretary updated Parliament and the Public Accounts Committee was informed."

The study said that while no cases of actual harm have been identified yet, a third of GPs have not yet responded on whether unprocessed items sent to them indicate potential harm for patients.

An NHS England spokesman said: "NHS England was deeply concerned to be belatedly informed by SBS in March 2016 about its backlog of unprocessed correspondence.

"We immediately set up a team, including clinical experts, to manage the incident, and all relevant correspondence has now been sent back to GPs for review.

"None of the patients whose cases have been reviewed to date have been harmed by the delay in correspondence."

At the time of publication NHS SBS had not said whether any staff had been disciplined or sacked following the scandal.