Patient safety ‘is being compromised’

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, has said the government is to blame for compromising patient safety, after new figures revealed that the number of patients readmitted to hospital as emergency cases has increased by a third since 2002.

Mr Lansley told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme that too much emphasis has been placed on waiting time targets, which has put extra pressure on NHS staff to try and move people out of hospital sooner.

Although he conceded that in some cases this could be viewed as being appropriate, he said that it could go too far, meaning that patients leave hospital too soon before they are well enough.

Mr Lansley stated: “I don’t think it is likely to be clinically justified, I think it may well be because hospitals are being pushed by the government and maybe the payments by results system as well to discharge patients quickly for financial and target driven reasons.”

The Liberal Democrat health spokesman, Steve Webb, said that it was a “false economy” to move patients out of hospital too soon. He said: “These figures show what can happen when financial pressures get in the way of clinical priorities.

A spokesman from the Department of Health defended government waiting list targets, saying that they were not to blame for the increased patient readmissions. He is quoted by the BBC as saying: “There is evidence that the majority of readmissions are not linked to the patient’s previous visit to hospital, but as a result of an on-going condition.”

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