The verdict on the NHS of Robert Francis QC, the chairman of the inquiry into the Mid-Staffs scandal, is frightening. “If we ran our airline industry on the same basis,” he told The Telegraph, “planes would be falling out of the sky all the time.” Indeed, for the families of some patients, this grim metaphor is entirely appropriate. The nightmare of Mid-Staffs saw hundreds more patients die than would normally be expected, in the context of appalling failings of care.
Just as shocking, however, has been the relative lack of personal responsibility taken. One senior nurse was struck off, but otherwise penalties were limited to a handful of junior nurses accused of, for instance, falsifying Accident and Emergency discharge times or physically and verbally abusing a dementia patient. Only one doctor working at the trust at the time has been struck off – for fraud. The more senior members of the profession have emerged largely unscathed.
As we have long argued, whistleblowers need to be properly protected for the sake of transparency and safety. But there also needs to be proper punishment for those who break the rules – as part of wider reform of the way that large parts of the NHS are managed, with the goal of putting the needs of patients first. As Mr Francis said: “We’ve just got to change the attitude that because it’s provided by the state, it’s all right for a number of people to be treated badly.”
He is absolutely right. If such failures occurred in any other walk of life – especially in the private sector – we could reasonably expect heads to roll and dramatic reforms to follow. The NHS, however, has been protected by its status as a sacred cow. Mid-Staffs should have been a wake-up call; instead, too much of the health service has carried on just as before.
Reform the NHS sacred cow
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