Slash hospital funding, says departing NHS chief executive

Sir David Nicholson at St Thomas’s hospital in London last 12 months. He says politicians want to stop adopting quick-phrase approaches to the NHS. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Outgoing NHS boss Sir David Nicholson has mixed a belated public admission of his mistakes in excess of the Mid Staffs scandal with a warning that the service have to undergo unpleasant alterations if it is to remain viable.

Nicholson, who retires at the finish of March soon after eight years as the NHS England chief executive, explained on Tuesday that he regretted not intervening appropriately when concerns about Stafford hospital emerged and was wrong not to meet family members of sufferers who obtained poor care there.

“The biggest and most clear mistake I created [in his 36-yr NHS career] was when the Healthcare Commission reported on Mid Staffordshire [Stafford] hospital [in 2009] and I went into the hospital and I did not seek out out the patient representatives and the people who were in [nearby patient campaign group] Cure the NHS and I didn’t do it because I manufactured the wrong call,” Nicholson advised an audience of well being pros and policymakers at the NHS’s health and care innovation expo in Manchester.

He also admitted he was “incorrect, absolutely incorrect” not to meet the families, who were campaigning to expose inadequate care at the hospital, merely since he feared his visit would “turn into a media circus”.

“There are totally no shortcuts to comprehending and speaking to individuals and family members and folks. Which is a error that I made that I bitterly, bitterly regret”, he extra.

Nicholson – dubbed “the guy with no shame” by campaigners and tabloid newspapers for refusing to resign over the affair or apologise directly – spoke with feeling and remorse, and went much more than his preceding statements about his actions over the hospital, even though once again did not say sorry.

He also admitted doing as well minor about Stafford in 2005 when he was chief executive of the NHS’s West Midlands strategic health authority.

Addressing the NHS’s long term sustainability in the face of growing demand for care but what are anticipated to be tight budgets for many years to come, Nicholson referred to as for hospital funding to be slashed and as an alternative employed to offer health-related care closer to patients’ houses. At a hospital he visited lately, he mentioned, 28% of the individuals had been diabetics, many of whom could have been treated far better elsewhere, except lack of funds implies few other services exist.

“We need to minimize investment in hospitals to make that take place. But we find it very hard to live with the consequences of doing that,” he stated. He urged politicians to quit adopting brief-phrase approaches to the NHS and be ready to defend the greater centralisation of hospital providers.

Recalling the 5 overall health secretaries he has worked with, he confirmed for the first time the suspicions that Andrew Lansley, the architect of the coalition’s radical restructuring of the NHS in England, wished him out.

Following Lansley unveiled his ideas in 2010 “he made it clear that he didn’t see me as the individual who would take that forward”, Nicholson stated. He stayed and produced the plans “as workable as possible”, even though had “frank and tough discussions” with Lansley about their implementation.

Nicholson’s strategies for his next move are unclear, and he is believed to be barred from operating at all for a set time, and only with Whitehall approval for a further time period.

Slash hospital funding, says departing NHS chief executive