One-fifth of NHS trusts may be 'covering up' mistakes

One in five NHS trusts may not be being open and honest about the numbers of patient safety incidents that occur in their hospitals, health officials have said.

Twenty per cent of acute NHS trusts in England have been flagged by health officials for under-reporting patient safety incidents, including events that cause severe harm or even death.

A new tool is being unveiled by the Department of Health (DH) and NHS England which enables the public to see how well their hospital is performing on key safety measures.

The new safety website shows that there are "concerns" about incident reporting at one in five acute trusts, a DH spokeswoman said.

Concerns are raised when a trust may not be reporting enough incidents, not reporting these events often enough or where staff feel that the organisation is not responding to incident reports as well as they could, she said.