THE report on "the worst crisis any district general hospital in
the NHS can ever have known" is evidence that "the marketisation of
the health service has gone too far," the Bishop of Lichfield, the
Rt Revd Jonathan Gledhill, said on Tuesday.
Published on Wednesday of last week, the Report of the Mid
Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry covers
"serious failings" at the Trust between January 2005 and March
2009.
In a letter to the Health Secretary, the inquiry chairman,
Robert Francis QC, said that the report told the story of the
"appalling suffering of many patients". This was "primarily caused
by a serious failure on the part of a provider Trust Board" that
"failed to tackle an insidious negative culture involving a
tolerance of poor standards and a disengagement from managerial and
leadership responsibilities".
The report also highlights a "completely inadequate standard of
nursing". It suggests that there may be a "concerning potential for
conflict between the Royal College of Nursing's professional role
of promoting high-quality standards in nursing, and its union role
of negotiating terms and conditions and defending members' material
and other narrow interests."
The first inquiry report on the Trust, published in 2010,
included stories of patients left in soiled bed-clothes for lengthy
periods, patients not assisted with eating, water left out of
reach, patients treated with "what appeared to be callous
indifference", and privacy and dignity denied "even in death".
The Francis report expresses a "very grave concern" that the
regulatory system of the NHS "failed in its primary duty to protect
patients and maintain confidence in the health-care system". It was
the "persistent complaints made by a very determined group of
patients and those close to them" that had brought the situation to
light.
Mr Francis, who has made 290 recommendations, called for a
"fundamental culture change" to create an NHS in which patients
were put first. This would be achieved by "engagement of every
single person serving patients in contributing to a safer,
committed and compassionate and caring service".
He warned that Stafford "was not an event of such rarity or
improbability that it would be safe to assume that it . . . will
not be repeated."
Bishop Gledhill, in whose diocese the Trust sits, said on
Tuesday: "Our first obligation is to make sure that the chief
recommendations of the Francis report are carried out so that
people will not be afraid to go to their local hospital." He
argued, however, that hospital staff had been "trying to make
improvements for several years"; they had "often been the ones who
have borne the weight of the cuts and reductions. We have now seen
what many of us suspected - that the marketisation of the health
service has gone too far . . . covering the bottom line has become
all-important."
Although Mr Francis concluded that the Trust had "prioritised
its finances and its Foundation Trust application over its quality
of care", he also referred to a management that had "no culture of
listening to patients". On Wednesday, the Prime Minister emphasised
that "Francis does not blame any specific policy," and announced
responses, including the creation of a Chief Inspector of
Hospitals, and an immediate investigation into the care standards
of hospitals with the highest mortality rates.
Angela
Tilby