Times Thunderer Column, 21.6.13

‘Those currently in power in the NHS don’t listen to the truth’

David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt profess to be “shocked” by the latest appalling NHS scandal, this time in Morecambe Bay, but they shouldn’t be. A regulator that failed so miserably in one hospital, Mid Staffs, is likely to have failed in others, along with the managers, clinical staff and commissioners who either failed to spot the scandal or colluded in the cover-up. What is shocking is that the Government decided to stick with the same leader of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson.

When the fish is rotting from the head, you need to remove it. Instead Mr Cameron and Mr Hunt fully support him as the only man to lead the NHS into this new era of openness and transparency, where we no longer cover up our mistakes. Sir David has finally agreed to retire next March, but his legacy is not just one of fear and bullying in the NHS, where too many in the chain of command kiss up, denying appalling care beneath them and delivering only good news to Downing Street. He has also ensured that many in key positions of

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CQC in the Dock

NHS England has confirmed there will an ‘inquiry in public’ into the serious systemic failures at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust (UHMBFT). But will it have the balls to expose yet more failings in the regulation and leadership of the NHS? The inquiry was sparked by the avoidable death of baby Joshua Titcombe at Furness General Hospital in November 2008.  Joshua had a low temperature due to lung infection that would have been easily treatable had it been diagnosed. Sadly, it wasn’t. Joshua’s crucial observation chart disappeared soon after his death, despite ‘extensive’ searches, leading the coroner to deduce,  32 months later, it may have been ‘deliberately destroyed.’ He concluded there was a ‘very worrying mark of suspicion hanging over the maternity unit at Furness General Hospital (part of UHMBFT)’ and identified ten serious failures. A previous review into the service had also found serious failings. So why did the Care Quality Commission not investigate?

Whistleblowing CQC board member Kay Sheldon recently accused the CQC of registering failing hospitals as safe to avoid another public scandal such as Mid Staffordshire.  ‘It seems to me that CQC gave assurance about the Trust that wasn’t actually

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A Law Unto Themselves

The success of Robert Francis QC in stopping the NHS from covering up the harm it causes is crucially dependent on the behaviour of his own profession. At the time of the Mid Staffordshire scandal, there was unequivocal guidance for NHS trusts, managers and clinical staff to be open and transparent when patients may have been harmed by their care, but lawyers tend to focus their attention on the law, and who’s paying their fees. Hence the solicitors’ code of conduct – to act in the best interests of the client – invariably trumps any wider ethical guidance to the NHS, particularly when it comes to admitting anything that might expose a hospital to bad press, litigation and financial loss. Francis’ solution – to make non-disclosure of harm a criminal offence –is as big a shift in the culture of medical law as it is to the NHS.

Eye readers will be well aware of the extent the NHS uses publically-funded lawyers to suppress whistleblowers. The case of John Moore-Robinson at Mid Staffs illustrates how such a defensive – but entirely legal –  culture obstructs parents from understanding how their son died. Moore-Robinson, a previously fit

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Interesting letter from GPs at Holmes Chapel Health Centre in Cheshire saying that some other  CCGs receive approximately 50% more money per capita than Eastern Cheshire CCG. Is this true? If so, how can it be justified?

CCG unfair funding

Legal duty to tell the truth must apply to all

‘How can you trust a doctor who doesn’t tell you the truth?’ So said Maria Shortis, founder of the Bristol Heart Baby Action Group, 15 years ago. Will Powell, father of Robbie, agrees. He’s spent 23 years, and all his savings, trying to get the truth about how and why Robbie died. He was promised a public inquiry, which never materialised, although he did make it to the European Court of Human Rights in 2000, which judged that ‘doctors have no (legal) duty to give parents of a child who died as a result of their negligence a truthful account of the circumstances of the death, nor even to refrain from deliberately falsifying records.’ (Eye…. )

For the 65 years of its existence, NHS organizations and staff have not been in breech of any statutory rule if they cover up a medical accident. The Bristol Inquiry recommended that ‘when things go wrong, hospitals and healthcare professionals have a duty of candour: to be open and honest.’ In 2003, chief medical officer Liam Donaldson observed ‘to err is human, but to cover up is unforgiveable’ and recommended a legal duty of

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