Going to hospital is a scary prospect!

And that's looking on the bright side. Because the odds are calculated by the Patients Association based on 5,000 deaths a year from hospital acquired infections and another 2000 from fatal errors made by medical staff. Both are an underestimate due the fact that the real level of fatalities caused by the NHS are disguised and obfuscated.

We now know that the death toll from errors last year officially reached 3,645 thanks to analysis obtained by the Lib Dems under the Freedom of Information Act.

This shows that of the total botched operations caused 385, wrong diagnosis resulted in 156, wrongly administered drugs accounted for 54 and a further 40 happened as a result of faulty medical equipment.

Almost 500 patients committed suicide because their depression was not properly monitored by medics.

Astonishingly 22 people died as a result of abuse by either hospital staff or visitors and a further 14 lost their lives because of record mix-ups.

Of course none of these figures include the thousands of people who die as a result of the condition that caused them to be admitted in the first place.

Those sympathetic to the medical staff responsible for this mayhem point out that increased pressure to meet targets has meant that the quality of care has inevitably suffered.

The Department of Health says that the NHS treats so many people that "mistakes and unforeseen incidents will occasionally happen".
In other words losing one in 300 due to totally avoidable cock-up or ineptitude isn't that bad.

But whichever way you view it the sheer size of this grim toll has transformed the way we look at NHS treatment. Once we would have considered our local hospital as a place of care and comfort. Now the idea of being admitted is genuinely scary.

Stay well.