Health bosses apologise after patients receive letters wrongly stating they have cancer

Health bosses have apologised to devastated patients after they wrongly received discharge letters indicating they had cancer.

Nearly 400 patients discharged from the Forth Valley Royal Hospital, near Falkirk, were sent apology letters for the mistake which occurred due to a computer glitch.

The discharge letters were also sent to the patient’s GP, but an updated version has since been issued to their surgery electronically.

Forth Valley NHS Trust said the error did not affect all of the 386 patients who were sent an apology, but they did not know how many discharge letters had been altered by the glitch.

When switching over the trust’s computer system, an error caused some patients previous medical history - which appeared on the bottom of the letter - to indicate they had cancer or endometriosis, a condition which affects the womb.

The wife of one patient, who received the news he had cancer in error, described the incident as "cruel".

She said: "We read through the document and were horrified to note that in the section entitled 'Co-morbidities' both colorectal cancer and lung cancer were mentioned.

"Naturally, we were both shocked and deeply concerned that the first time we were hearing about this was in a letter, which didn't look like it should have been sent to us."

A spokeswoman for NHS Forth Valley said the rest of the information in the letter was accurate, and an updated printed version will be sent to all patients.

“This issue only affected discharge letters sent to GPs and, in some cases, patients during a short period from Ist – 7th August 2019,” they said.