Jeremy Hunt kept quiet for months about major NHS mailing blunder which put 1,788 patients at risk

‘Jeremy Hunt kept quiet for months about a ‘major blunder’ which saw more than 700,000 letters to NHS patients mislaid, some of which contained cancer diagnosis, treatment plans and blood tests, it emerged today.
The health secretary learned in March 2016 that hundreds of thousands of NHS letters had been left to pile up in warehouse by NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS), which is co-owned by the Department of Health.
But a new report by the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed that Mr Hunt ‘decided not to alert Parliament or the public’ to the crisis even though it was known as early as December 2015 that the letters contained ‘clinical correspondence’ and staff had already binned 35 sacks.
The NAO discovered that more than 1,700 patients could have been harmed by not receiving their letters. Overall, NHS England and NHS SBS discovered 709,000 items of unprocessed mail which had been steadily increasing since 2011.’
Read more: Jeremy Hunt kept quiet for months about major NHS mailing blunder which put 1,788 patients at risk