Kingston and Richmond NHS Foundation Trust

Wider context from the report

“The clinicians assisting with the inquest advised the court that there was no system to share radiology across the Region. In West London, patients are frequently transferred from hospitals to access particular specialisms of care, such as cancer care. In this case, the previous images taken at Queen Mary's Hospital, London, could not be accessed across a common link by Kingston Hospital, Surrey and therefore the opportunity was missed to see and compare previous images. While this did not have an impact on the outcome in this case, it could have very significant consequences and lead to missed diagnoses and potentially fatal outcomes of untreated disease processes. In this case the opportunity to offer palliative care and ease the relatives of end of life treatment was lost. The lack of a shared portal also creates further work for clinicians who have to contact the previous hospitals to access this information. There are many shared systems in place in the NHS for cross-site sharing of images and reports, and it was not clear from those assisting the court at this inquest why similar systems are not currently in place for this Region and not anticipated for “several more years”. ”