Health Services: Missing Persons
(asked on 19th November 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have been reported missing from (a) hospitals and (b) other health care settings in each of the last four years for which data is available.
The following table shows a count of patient safety incidents, reported as occurring where the incident category is absconder or missing patient, broken down by care setting, each year from 2020/21 to 2023/24:
Care setting of occurrence | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 |
Acute or general hospital | 13,792 | 15,541 | 17,545 | 13,911 |
Ambulance service | 76 | 64 | 143 | 141 |
Community and general dental service | 6 | 13 | 61 | 1 |
Community nursing, medical and therapy service, including community hospital | 814 | 745 | 801 | 309 |
Community optometry or optician service | 81 | 295 | 284 | 0 |
Community pharmacy | 0 | 1 | 8 | 1 |
General practice | 8 | 3 | 9 | 17 |
Learning disabilities service | 143 | 164 | 143 | 94 |
Mental health service | 10,654 | 11,396 | 13,281 | 7,146 |
Total | 25,574 | 28,222 | 32,275 | 21,620 |
Source: National Reporting and Learning System, NHS England.
Notes:
- an absconder or missing patient is not a direct equivalent of ‘reported missing’ as it includes issues such as leaving without signing a discharge against medical advice form, or failing to return from agreed leave on time, rather than consisting solely of reports of patients who abscond or who are reported missing to the police.
- the data also includes reports of patients who are missing from a follow-up, for instance, those who should have been asked to return to a clinic for review but whose call back for a further appointment has been missed.