Inquiry needed after shocking NHS failure
The Healthcare Commission’s report into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust makes shocking reading. It paints a picture of services which would have disgraced a third world nation.
What beggars belief is that between 400 and 1,200 people may have died without anyone in authority, apparently, realising that something was wrong.
But of course, patients knew the hospital trust was failing to provide a reasonable standard of care. Some were denied medication, or left to go thirsty unless they resorted to drinking from vases.
And they made their concerns known. Campaigning patients, and relatives of patients, who suffered at the hospital, set out to bring the hospital’s failings to the attention of NHS managers and local politicians – but nothing appears to have been done as a result.
The immediate issue this raises is how mechanisms can be put in place to allow patients and staff to raise concerns when they have them, and how to guarantee that their worries will be taken seriously by those in authority.
In any organisation, not least public services, there is always a temptation for those at the top levels to close ranks in the face of criticism. This must not be allowed to happen in the NHS.
The Healthcare Commission inquiry does not blame medical staff.
It places the blame on the trust’s board, which was focused on finance, targets and achieving foundation trust status.
It’s tempting to scoff at the idea of attaching importance to money, but a hospital which slips into bankruptcy isn’t going to be able to treat patients.
However, balancing the books is a good thing because it allows health trusts to offer healthcare services reliably.
If the only way managers can keep within budgets is to neglect patients then they are failing.
It is possible that Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust’s problems reflect a deeper problem in the ethos of the NHS itself – not on the part of medical staff but on the part of managers who have come to see meeting targets and saving money as ends in themselves rather than tools which aid treatment.
As campaigners say, there must be a full public inquiry to discover what exactly went wrong in Staffordshire.
And one of the issues it must consider is whether the failings were due entirely to local circumstances, or whether they were caused by an over-reliance on targets imposed upon the NHS as a whole.
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