Dozens of patients died or came to harm because of treatment delays and serious errors at the Northern Care Alliance (NCA), the NHS trust that runs hospitals in Oldham, Salford, Bury and Rochdale.

Trust reports show lengthy delays were linked to 28 deaths and 56 cases of severe harm, while problems diagnosing illness led to ten deaths last year. The NCA treats more than a million patients across the four boroughs.

The trust also recorded ten "never events" across 2025 and 2026. The NHS describes never events as patient safety incidents that were wholly preventable. Most involved surgery on the wrong body part or items accidentally left inside a patient during an operation. The trust said these were caused by staffing pressures and overwhelmed operating theatre staff.

There were 12,000 cases of delayed treatment last year. Bosses say persistently high levels of sick leave are a major issue. A recent board report said sickness absence "remains an area of concern" and that the trust "continues to be an outlier compared with other organisations nationally". It said this likely reflected sustained pressure on colleagues and that more work was needed to support wellbeing.

Concerns were also raised about maternity care, with reports highlighting an increase in stillbirths recorded earlier this year.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) issued a warning notice in February highlighting services where "rapid and significant improvements" were needed. The warning followed an inspection of Salford Royal Hospital in September 2025, carried out due to concerns about how gynaecology, spinal and neurosurgery services were managed. Surgical services were rated "requires improvement" after inspectors found "some aspects of the service were not always safe" and "there was an increased risk that people could be harmed".

In January, an unannounced inspection of emergency care at Fairfield General Hospital found "immediate patient safety concerns" in Medicine and Urgent and Emergency Services.

In response to reporting by the Independent, the NCA said it had changed how it runs the organisation, putting more clinicians into leadership positions with a direct role in decision-making. A spokesperson said: "Like many NHS organisations, we're facing challenges. We're clear about what those challenges are and recognise the concerns colleagues have raised. We are working to address those concerns and will continue to listen when colleagues tell us we haven't got something right, so that we can keep learning and improving."

The trust recently apologised for the actions of rogue surgeon John Bradley Williamson, who worked at Salford Royal Hospital, the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital and Spire Manchester Hospital. Separate reviews found he caused severe harm to patients across the region.

Salford MP Rebecca Long-Bailey said she had been raising patient safety and whistleblowing concerns at the NCA for some time. She said: "These latest allegations strengthen the case I have already been making: staff must be able to speak up safely, concerns must be properly investigated, and there must be independent scrutiny where the Trust has failed to act."

Meanwhile, Unison said more than 350 NCA employees, including nurses, clinical support workers and housekeepers, will strike on August 24, 26 and 28. The union said the dispute is over the trust's use of outside agency NHS Professionals to manage overtime work.