A study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has found that around 750 patients a month are dying unnecessarily in NHS hospitals.

Factors such as inattentive monitoring of the patient’s condition, patients being prescribed the wrong medicine and doctors making the wrong diagnosis are amongst the possible causes of the vast number of avoidable deaths.

The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced earlier this year that hospitals in England would be required to monitor the rate of avoidable deaths and said that these deaths are the ‘biggest scandal in global healthcare’.

Lois Harrison, a lawyer from the Medical Negligence Team at Blythe Liggins said, “Losing a loved one is an incredibly painful and difficult experience without the added torment that their death could have been avoided.

This significant number of failings by hospitals is unacceptable and needs to be urgently addressed”.

Caption: Lois Harrison, Medical Negligence Team at Blythe Liggins