The NHS has been left reeling after thousands of medical letters weren’t delivered, instead being left in an East Midlands processing centre, as a result of people changing their GPs.
From screen testing results and treatment plans to clinical notes, a range of mail was not sent to their intended recipients.
An investigation is being undertaken by the National Audit Office into how the NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) managed the sending and receiving of the letters sent by GPs after patients changed their medical professional for various reasons, including moving.
NHS SBS is a limited company set up between the Department of Health and a private company, Sopra Steria, reporting revenues of roughly £87 million from its deal with the NHS.
The national number of letters held stands at 700,000 as of May 31, 2017.
Following an audit into the papers, 1,788 of the letters are regarded as very important and could cause harm if handled incorrectly.
A spokesman from NHS England has expressed their dissatisfaction at the mismanagement of the letters.
In a statement they said: “NHS England was deeply concerned to be belatedly informed by SBS in March 2016 about its backlog of unprocessed correspondence.
“We immediately set up a team, including clinical experts, to manage the incident, and all relevant correspondence has now been sent back to GPs for review. None of the patients whose cases have been reviewed to date have been harmed by the delay in correspondence.”
The NHS SBS began 21 primary care trust contracts between 2008 and 2012, including South Derbyshire – requiring organisations to redirect clinical and other correspondence.
In 2011, it was reported that NHS SBS held 8,146 letters from the East Midlands that had not been processed and by March, 2017 this number had dramatically grown to 435,000.
A process review carried out by NHS SBS in January 2014, alerted its managers to a backlog of 205,000 items from three regions, which also included North East London and South West England.
A labelled room named “clinical notes” was set to store the letters, but a follow up review found that the label was removed by the general manager at SBS because “you don’t want to advertise what’s in that room.”
Because of NHS England’s policy of destroying records ten years following a patient’s death, 35 separate records had to be destroyed.
British Medical Association GP committee deputy chair, Dr Richard Vautry said: “These failings are completely unacceptable and it is a disgrace that this service failed so badly that patient care was being compromised.
“The handling and transfer of clinical correspondence is a crucial part of how general practice operates and it’s essential that important information reaches GPs as soon as possible so that they can provide the best possible care to their patients.
"The public should have confidence that their records are up-to-date and that communications related to their treatment are being speedily dealt with. Patients will rightly be angry that this private company, contracted by the NHS, has failed practices and patients to such an extent.
"At a time when the NHS is under incredible funding pressure, we can ill afford to spend £6 million to clear up this administrative mess that has resulted from SBS failures."
It has been estimated that the cost of this incident will be a minimum of £6.6 million to sort out with 7,330 GPs having already been paid £2.5 million to compensate for the time spent reviewing and assessing the correspondence relating to these patients.
