‘Flaw’ leads to review of patient X-ray records
Victoria Macdonald
Health and Social Care Editor
The records of 6,000 NHS patients are having to be reviewed after a private company admitted it had failed to make essential checks on their X-rays.
Care UK, which runs an urgent care centre in north-west London for NHS Brent, has admitted that there was a “flaw” in its system which meant that X-rays or radiographs were not always reviewed by a specialist. Nor were discharge letters sent to their GPs.
Now it is having to review all patient records dating back to when the centre opened in March 2011. In a statement to Channel 4 News, Care UK blamed it on “a couple of changes in the management structure of the team that ran the centre”.
The statement said: “As part of the handovers, there was an oversight in the way this part of our administrative process was implemented.”
The urgent care centre, based at Central Middlesex Hospital, was set up to take the pressure off accident and emergency units and deal with minor illnesses and injuries. Care UK also has similar centres in Ealing and Birmingham, although it says Brent is the only centre affected.
Serious incident report
The X-ray records of all patients are meant to be reviewed by a specialist for any problems missed at the time. Care UK found that at various times over the past year this did not happen. It informed NHS Brent on 30 March and a serious incident report has now been logged.
Doctors in Brent, north-west London, were sent letters shortly before easter informing them of the incident. Part of the review is to cross-reference the X-rays with the child protection register.
Care UK said that to date 1,400 records have been reviewed and that around 1 per cent of of patients have had to be called and offered a follow-up because of a missed pathology such as a broken bone, but that nobody had taken up the offer.
‘Increased controversy’
Nevertheless, questions will now be asked about how robust Care UK’s auditing system was, given that it took a year for this “flaw” in the system to be detected. It also comes at a time when there is controversy over the increased role of independent healthcare providers in the NHS following the changes to the health service by the coalition government.
Channel 4 News has also learned that despite logging a serious incident, Care UK failed to inform the Care Quality Commission, which is responsible for regulating and monitoring healthcare providers. It is not legally required to do this, but NHS Brent and the CQC said it would have been expected of them.
In a statement, the CQC said it was “disappointed that Care UK did not inform the CQC about problems with its system”. It said: “We will be asking Care UK to keep us informed about the progress and outcomes of its investigation and we will be seeking assurances that it has made the necessary changes to ensure its systems are robust.”
‘Nobody picked up the phone’
Care UK said that although it was not legally obliged to do this, it “probably should have told CQC, but nobody picked up the phone”.
Care UK provides the NHS with walk-in centres, GP surgeries, treatment centres and a range of specialist care and children’s services.
Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, became embroiled in a row after he was found to have accepted a £21,000 donation from Care UK’s chairman to fund his private office in 2009 when he was shadow health spokesman.
Care UK’s medical director, Dr Richard Clapp, said it expected the review to be completed within the next two or three weeks.
