A north-east London NHS trust has paid out almost £70,000 in five years over wrongly prescribed medication.
Barking, Havering and Redbridge University NHS Trust (BHRUT) paid £68,625 to five claimants.
It was among the top ten highest paying trusts in England, out of 236. No other trusts in the capital made the list.
A BHRUT spokesperson said it would be introducing electronic prescriptions in September, which would “significantly reduce” the risk.
The trust oversees King George Hospital in Goodmayes and Queen’s Hospital in Romford, and is responsible for around 750,000 Londoners.
Medication errors are described by the NHS as any ‘patient safety incidents’ caused by an error in prescribing, dispensing, or administering on medicines.
They can include failures to properly monitor patients on powerful drugs, poor communication between GPs and hospitals, and giving the patients the wrong medication.
In more serious incidents, they can lead to the patients suffering a cardiac arrest, stroke, anaphylactic shock or death.
Medication error claims made since 2020 have cost the NHS a total of £54million, as well as a further £35.6m in legal costs.
Between April 2019 and March 2024, NHS Resolution – the health service’s legal arm – received a total of 1,129 claims and incidents relating to errors in the medication process. Some 765 claims were settled with damages awarded, according to data obtained by Medical Negligence Assist (MNA).
Sophie Cope, a solicitor with MNA, said: “Though they may be rare, medication errors can have devastating and life-altering consequences for both the patient and their families.
“It is really important that mistakes are acknowledged and challenged quickly and effectively to prevent them happening in the future and it is key that those affected know that support is available to them.”
The BHRUT spokesperson said in full: “We would like to apologise to the patients and families affected and reassure them that we review every case to make sure we learn from what went wrong.
“We are introducing electronic prescribing in September and this will reduce significantly the risk of errors happening in the future.”
Across the NHS, the most common complaint was about unnecessary pain, which cost the health service £5.3m in compensation payouts.
Death as a result of medication errors was the second most common, which saw £4.7m paid out to 105 claimants. A further 88 claims were unsuccessful.
According to the data, £1.4m was paid out for psychiatric or psychological damage, alongside £1.3m for anaphylactic shock or allergic shock.
