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NHS misplaces 700,000 pieces of medical documents, putting patients at risk

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has denied that patients were put at risk after the NHS mislaid more than 700,000 pieces of medical correspondence, including cancer test results.

In a data blunder the Government is accused of covering up, the documents went undelivered for five years - ending up stashed in a warehouse rather than being sent to GPs.

NHS England has launched an investigation to find out how many patients have been affected by the biggest loss of medical documents in the history of the health service, and whether delays in reports reaching their GPs have played a part in any deaths.

The missing medical correspondence, mislaid by the NHS Shared Business Service (SBS), included blood and urine tests, treatment plans, material related to child protection cases and cancer diagnoses.

Mr Hunt said that there was "no evidence" patients were put at risk by the mishap.

Responding to an urgent question in the Commons, Mr Hunt said: "Patient safety, as you know, is always our primary concern.

"As things stand, if you had listened to my response, you would have heard that there is no evidence so far that any patient safety has been put at risk."

Mr Hunt told MPs that he was told of the problem in March last year when health bosses found around 708,000 letters had been lost by SBS since 2011.

Of those, 2,500 were investigated over possible risks to patient safety.

Mr Hunt had quietly disclosed the details of the data loss in a written statement on last day of parliament before the summer break in July.

However, the statement said only that an issue had been identified "whereby some correspondence in the mail redirection service has not reached the intended recipients".

At the time the Government refused to say how many patients had been affected by the blunder and Mr Hunt did not make clear the scale of the error.

The British Medical Association's GP committee deputy chairman Richard Vautrey told the newspaper: "This is a very serious incident, it should never have happened and it's an example of what happens when the NHS tries to cut costs by inviting private companies to do work which they don't do properly."

He said patients could have been harmed by a delay in diagnosis or taken drugs they should not have done.

The NHS Shared Business Services is co-owned by the Department of Health and French company Sopra Steria.

The NHS has spent £2.2m so far on getting GPs to look at the returned correspondence - which primarily affects patients in the East Midlands, the South West of England and northeast London.

Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth told Sky News: "When this emerged in March last year he (Jeremy Hunt) should have been raising some pretty serious questions and given that he prides himself on transparency, given that he lectures everybody on transparency, the way in which he has appeared to cover this up, the way in which he has not given parliament proper answers and, more importantly, has not given patients and their families answers is nothing short of a disgrace."

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: "This looks, to me, like a cover-up. Jeremy Hunt has serious questions to answer.

"People could have died as a result of this, and so we need to know who knew what and when."

An NHS England spokesman said: "Some correspondence forwarded to SBS between 2011-2016 was not redirected or forwarded by them to GP surgeries or linked to the medical record when the sender sent correspondence to the wrong GP or the patient changed practice.

"A team including clinical experts has reviewed that old correspondence and it has now all been delivered wherever possible to the correct practice.

"SBS have expressed regret for this situation."

A spokesman for Theresa May said: "We are aware that some correspondence was sent to the wrong GP and other issues around it. The DH and NHS England have been working to resolve this issue and deliver it to the place it was sent to.

"The Department for Health and NHS England have been working hard to rectify it."