Mistakes by doctors 'cost 40,000 lives a year'

Hospitals need to improve their recording of medical errors, which cause about 40,000 deaths a year in the NHS, researchers said yesterday.

The independent research group Dr Foster found that some NHS trusts were even reporting zero levels of mistakes, a claim branded "unlikely".

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the researchers called for hospitals to be encouraged to improve the recording of so-called "adverse events" on their systems. The group analysed hospital statistics from 1999-2000 to 2002-03, including some 50 million care "episodes".

They found that 2.2 per cent of all episodes - about 27,500 a year - included some kind of adverse event, ranging from very minor injuries and prolonged hospital stays to disability or even death. Misadventures - events that might have been avoided with ordinary standards of care - were mentioned in 0.03 per cent of episodes (almost 4,000 a year). The review also found that hospital infections, such as the MRSA superbug, were poorly recorded.