Due to basic errors conducted by the medical staff, in NHS hospitals about 12,000 patients are dying needlessly. This has been observed by the most detailed study into hospital deaths ever performed in the UK.

It was seen that in about 13 per cent of patients who died, something went wrong on the hospital’s part and this was seen by the researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and colleagues. It means that an error only caused death in 5.2 per cent of these that is equivalent to 11,859 preventable deaths in hospitals in England.

Helen Hogan, who led the study, said, “We found medical staff were not doing the basics well enough – monitoring blood pressure and kidney function, for example. They were also not assessing patients holistically early enough in their admission so they didn't miss any underlying condition. And they were not checking side-effects... before prescribing drugs.”

There was a case where a man who was in his middle age had developed an infection as he was getting a cyst removed from his neck. He was being given antibiotics but what the hospital staff did not notice was that he was not responding to these medicines and when it was noticed it was too late.