A major National Health Service trust has failed to investigate over 1,000 unexpected patient deaths since 2010, according to a critical new report.
BBC News, which has seen the document, says the study blames a failure of leadership at the executive level of the NHS trust Southern Health.
The trust, which runs services in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, investigated just 13 per cent of 1,454 unexpected patient deaths, the study says.
Investigation rates were particularly low for elderly patients with mental health problems (0.3 per cent) and for patients in general with a learning disability (1 per cent).
Investigations that were carried out allegedly proceeded in a poor and untimely manner, attracting criticism from local coronors.
The trust says it has “serious concerns” about the report’s interpretation of what auditors recorded.
The report was commissioned by NHS England and carried out by independent auditors Mazars.
It was ordered to be carried out in 2013, after Connor Sparrowhawk, an 18-year-old patient, drowned in a bath following an epileptic seizure at a Southern Health hospital in Oxfordshire.
The effectiveness of NHS health care is generally rated highly across international comparisons. A 2014 report by the Commonwealth Fund found the UK's health service best overall out of 11 major national health systems, despite the UK spending a lower proportion of its GDP on healthcare than other comparable developed economies.
Localised concerns about NHS care do exist, however. A high-profile inquiry into care at Stafford Hospital released in 2013 criticised the local NHS trust for causing unnecessary suffering.
Jan Tregelles, chief executive of learning disabilities charity Mencap called for more thorough analysis of the causes behind any future deaths.
“1,200 people with a learning disability are dying avoidably in the NHS every year. This is a national scandal," she said.
“One of the key recommendations of the government commissioned ‘Confidential Inquiry into premature deaths of people with learning disability’ was the importance of proper analysis into the deaths of people with a learning disability. Only then we will be able to identify the causes of avoidable deaths and ensure that they are properly addressed."
A spokesperson for Southern Health said: “There are serious concerns about the draft report's interpretation of the evidence.
“We would stress the draft report contains no evidence of more deaths than expected in the last four years of people with mental health needs or learning disabilities for the size and age of the population we serve.”
