Half of NHS trusts are failing to comply with alerts designed to protect patients from harm, research suggests.

Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the charity Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA) found 654 instances of patient safety alerts not complied with.

The alerts are made by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) and cover everything from equipment failure to warnings on correct dosage.

Many alerts are issued after cases where patients have been harmed and have a deadline which trusts are told to meet.

The AvMA report noted "significant improvement" since August 2010, when the last study was carried out, but too many trusts are still ignoring alerts or not implementing them properly.

The data covers all patient safety alerts issued since 2004 for which deadlines have already passed.

Applicable trusts that had outstanding patient safety alerts supplied information - more than 400 trusts in England.

Overall, there were 654 instances of patient safety alerts which had not been complied with - a 50% drop on the August 2010 figure.

But the report argued that "each alert not complied with means that lives are being put at unnecessary risk".

Overall, 203 (about 50%) of trusts had failed to comply with at least one alert. Some 45 trusts had not complied with five or more alerts and five trusts had not complied with 10 or more alerts.

Click here to read the rest of the article.