County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust has today issued a sincere apology to patients who have received care through its breast cancer service that did not meet the standards they – or the Trust – would expect.
The apology comes as the Trust holds an open public Trust Board meeting to share an update on the review of the breast service that has been underway since February 2025. The Trust has also published the findings of a detailed external review conducted by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS).
The Trust launched the review following a patient safety incident earlier this year. This was alongside wider concerns raised through a Northern Cancer Alliance peer review completed between April and June 2024 and an earlier 2019 Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) visit, which had suggested the Trust was an outlier in some aspects of breast care delivery.
In July 2024, following an external peer review led by the Northern Cancer Alliance which raised concerns about clinical approaches and service integration, North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (NENC ICB) invited the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) to carry out an independent review of breast services.
This step was taken with the full support of the Trust and with a shared commitment to transparency and patient safety. The RCS team visited the Trust in January 2025 and issued their report in April 2025.
Kathryn Burn, Executive Director of Nursing, said: “We know that some patients have not received the standard of care that we would want for them, or that they deserve. We have identified areas where improvement was needed – including how surgical decisions were made, how our multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) worked and where some outdated practices were still in use.
“For some patients, this may have resulted in more extensive surgery than was clinically necessary at the time. We fully recognise how distressing this is to hear, and we are truly sorry.
“Over the past four months, we have been reviewing the care of patients who had surgery through the breast service in 2024. Where we have concerns about the care a patient received we are contacting them directly and personally about this. Patients whose care has been reviewed and found to be appropriate are also being contacted to provide reassurance.
“This work is not yet complete, and we continue to review patient notes. We have also set up a patient call line and email address where any patients who have questions or concerns about their care can get in touch with us to share their experience.”
Since February, we have reviewed – with the support of external experts – 123 individual cases of care. We have spoken with more than 80 patients to openly discuss elements which could have been done differently and been improved.
Kathryn added: “We are incredibly grateful to the patients who have taken the time to speak with us, to share their experiences and to raise concerns. Listening to these experiences has been a vital part of learning and improving.
“The review is still ongoing and we remain committed to speaking directly with any patient whose care warrants follow-up. We also continue to welcome contact from any patient who has concerns about their experience.”
The published RCS report highlights a number of important areas for improvement – many of which the Trust had already identified and started addressing prior to publication.
The Trust has appointed two new consultant breast surgeons, invested in modern equipment and strengthened both its MDT processes and clinical governance arrangements.
