Potential harm to outpatients after 6,000 delayed letters at Blackpool hospitals

The hospital trust can offer no assurances that harm did not occur

Hello and welcome to The Blackpool Lead.

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been forced into action after it emerged that 6,000 letters to patients were delayed.

In response to questions from The Blackpool Lead, the chief operating officer has apologised but did not say that nobody was harmed as a result of the backlog.

Nor did it say what caused the backlog.

That is the focus of today’s edition.

Blackpool briefing

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Potential harm to outpatients after 6,000 delayed letters at Blackpool hospitals

Blackpool Victoria Hospital

By Michael Holmes

Thousands of outpatients on the Fylde coast could have been put at risk because of a huge backlog in letters, it can today be revealed.

The 6,000 delayed letters from the gastroenterology clinic, which deals with digestive issues, led the Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s Quality Assurance Committee to raise the alarm with bosses.

It “expressed concern about potential patient harm arising from delayed communication following outpatient appointments”, a report obtained by The Blackpool Lead shows.

And the panel warned: “The absence of reported complaints does not provide sufficient assurance that harm has not occurred.”

The trust, which runs Blackpool Victoria Hospital and Clifton Hospital in St Annes, has since set up a “task-and-finish group” to “address the issue”, documents show.

In response to questions from The Blackpool Lead, chief operating officer Janet Barnsley apologised.

But she stopped short of saying no-one had been harmed as a result of the backlog, saying only that no “significant” hurt had been identified.