Poor care on hospital wards responsible for 12,000 preventable deaths every year

Poor care on wards is the main cause of 12,000 preventable hospital deaths every year.

According to research published online in BMJ Quality and Safety, the problem of preventable deaths was found to occur at all stages of care.

But, 44 per cent of preventable deaths happened while patients were being cared for on a ward.

Poor clinical monitoring contributed to 31 per cent of the deaths, the wrong diagnosis in another 30 per cent, and poor fluid or drug management in 21 per cent.

The researchers reviewed the case records of 1,000 adult patient deaths at 10 randomly selected hospitals in England during 2009.

“Confirmation of the relatively small proportion of deaths that appear to be preventable provides further evidence that overall hospital mortality rates are a poor indicator of quality of care,” they say.

And it’s mainly the elderly who are failed, with 60 per cent of the deaths happening to older patients ‘who were not expected to live for more than a year’.