Missed prescriptions of anticoagulants

​Request  750983055 

Please could I request the following information about missed prescriptions of anticoagulants over the past five years, broken down by year:

1. The number of incidents recorded where a patient was prescribed an anticoagulant or antiplatelet medication but the prescription was not administered or given to the patient.

2. The number of Serious Incident Reports or internal/external reviews relating to missed or delayed administration of anticoagulants/antiplatelets.

3. The number of cases where failure to prescribe or administer anticoagulants/antiplatelets was judged to have contributed to patient harm or death. 

Response

It should be noted that figures for (1) represent non-administration of prescribed medication versus those in (3) which represent non-prescription / failure to prescribe or administer.

1

Nine incidents have been recorded in Health and Care Jersey's incident reporting system over the last five years where a patient was not given a prescribed anticoagulant or antiplatelet medication dose. 

2

All incidents recorded were reviewed. Three serious incident reviews were completed. 

3

There are ten documented cases of patients coming to harm as a result of failure to prescribe or administer anticoagulants or antiplatelet medications over the last five years; the majority of these were assessed as low physical harm. 

Owing to the small numbers involved, an annual breakdown is not provided as this could identify distinct cases and breach the privacy of individuals. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied. 

Article applied 

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.​​