“John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, last night told the Observer that patient safety had been neglected by hospitals too busy meeting NHS-imposed financial targets: “Too many hospitals are too concerned with meeting financial targets at the expense of clinical standards, and we are seeing patients suffering as a consequence.”

“Today’s research exposes systemic failures in large parts of the NHS during the last financial year and finds:

■ 39% of trusts failing to investigate unexpected deaths or cases of serious harm on their wards.

■ At least 209 incidents in which “foreign objects”, such as swabs and drill-bits, were left inside patients after surgery.

■ At least 82 cases in which medical staff operated on the wrong part of the patient’s body.

It finds that 5,024 people died after being admitted for “low-risk” conditions such as asthma or appendicitis, of whom 848 were under 65. A proportion of those deaths will be linked to safety errors.”