TWELVE patients died and thousands more were harmed as a result of mistakes and safety issues at hospitals in Sussex.

The reported incidents included problems with diagnoses, mistakes during operations, wrong medication being given and issues with equipment.

Other concerns included patients suffering accidents such as slips and falls, issues over medical records and confidentiality, staffing and facilities.

Most of the incidents did not cause any harm to the patient involved but others led to serious injuries, problems or complications.

In some cases they were followed by a patient’s death although hospitals say this does not always mean the incident was the direct cause – particularly if a patient was already very ill.

The figures, published by NHS England, show the number of mistakes, accidents and other issues reported by hospitals between April and September last year.

Seven patients at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust died following incidents during this period and another three suffered severe harm.

A further 1,101 cases led to patients suffering low to moderate harm.

A total of 5,746 incidents were reported.

East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust recorded 7,505 incidents, of which two were followed by the patient’s death and 12 led to severe problems.

A total of 1,732 incidents caused low or moderate harm to the patient.

Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust reported 4,245 incidents, three of which were followed by a patient’s death.

Seven patients suffered severe harm while 1,146 had minor or moderate complications or problems.

Hospital trusts said the vast majority of incidents did not result in any harm to the patient.

However every effort was made to ensure lessons were learned from any that happened.

A spokesman for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals said: “We have a robust, clinician-led, process for reviewing all patient safety incidents which includes a group of senior consultants scrutinising the relatively small number of incidents which result in harm. We fully involve the patient or their family in all investigations and the family always receive the full final report.

“We work hard to support, encourage and enable staff to report incidents without fear and use numerous ways to promote the learning from serious incidents so that, where possible, we can prevent the same serious incidents from happening again in the future.”

East Sussex Healthcare associate director of governance Ashley Parrott said: “We have an open and transparent culture and our staff are encouraged to report incidents when they occur.

“All incidents are reviewed, investigated and analysed for trends and depending on severity will be followed up with a detailed investigation during which the patient and family are kept fully informed.

“Local people should be reassured the trust uses these incidents to learn and implement actions to minimise the risk of any re-occurrence and continuously improve patient safety.”