Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many never events were recorded by NHS trusts in each of the last five years.
Never Events are serious incidents that are entirely preventable because guidance or safety recommendations providing strong systemic protective barriers are available at a national level, and should have been implemented by all healthcare providers.
National Health Service providers are encouraged to report all Never Events through the National Reporting and Learning System. The Care Quality Commission views failure to report a Never Event as a breach of a provider’s registration requirement and which may attract sanctions.
Below are the total numbers of Never Events for the last five years which are published online by NHS Improvement and can be accessed at the following link:
https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/never-events-data/
The last column contains the total of Never Events reported by NHS trusts.
Year | Total number of Never Events | Total number of Never Events from NHS trusts |
2013/14 | 338 | 322 |
2014/15 | 306 | 288 |
2015/16 | 442 | 412 |
2016/17 | 445 | 414 |
2017/18 (provisional data subject to change as local investigations take place) | 469 | 434 |