patient safety incidents or near misses in 2004/2005 which were estimated to cost the National Health Service (NHS) some 2 billion pounds annually in extra bed days, the National Audit Office said. The spending watchdog said that many incidents -- that range from patient falls to patients being given the wrong medication -- still went unreported and that the number of people injured or killed could be much higher. "Other estimates of deaths range from 840 to 34,000 but, in reality, the NHS simply does not know," the report said. Among other common safety incidents were equipment-related errors and problems over documentation and communication failures.

"It is the clear volume of these cases which is worrying, 1 million incidents a year, and even more concerning that half of them could have been prevented if there had been proper reporting procedures," Edward Leigh, the MP who chairs the Committee of Public Accounts told BBC Radio. Last year health trusts recorded 2,081 deaths as a results of patient safety incidents and the watchdog's head John Bourn said more must be done to reduce unintentional harm. "Lessons and solutions must be better evaluated and shared by all organisations with a role in keeping patients safe," Bourn said in a statement. The NAO report said despite progress by health professionals, there remains significant room for improvement and for a clear system to monitor that lessons are learnt and mistakes not repeated.

Part of the problem appeared to be a culture of blame that pervades many hospitals, which made it hard for staff to report problems. Patients involved in safety lapses were often not informed. The watchdog said that only a quarter of NHS Trusts routinely told patients they had been involved in a reported incident and that 6 percent never told patients. Reuters