NHS wastes at least £1bn a year on avoidable errors, claims health secretary

Medication errors, avoidable infections after surgery, and other errors in hospitals are wasting at least £1bn (€1.25bn; $1.6bn) of NHS money each year, England’s health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has claimed.

Hunt said a new report commissioned by the Department of Health provided evidence of the “wasteful and expensive” levels of poor care in the NHS.1 The report, produced by the consultancy firm Frontier Economics, estimated that preventable incidents were costing the NHS at least £1bn a year and possibly as much as …