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October 13, 2024
Hospitals have made no improvements in patient safety or care in the three years since the Mid Staffordshire scandal, the health watchdog said yesterday.
In a scathing verdict, the Care Quality Commission said the number of warning notices it had handed to NHS trusts for putting patients at risk had more than doubled over the past year.
And the number of serious problems – including patients not being fed, being left for hours on trolleys or over serious staffing shortages – had risen by a fifth.
The appalling neglect that cost hundreds of lives at Mid Staffs from 2005 to 2009 has put hospitals on notice not to repeat the same mistakes.
But the CQC warns they are no better at protecting patients from harm, ensuring they are treated with dignity or respect or in monitoring standards of care.
In its annual report on the NHS – published yesterday – the watchdog states: ‘In the aftermath of the failures of care at Mid Staffordshire NHS foundation trust, our inspectors’ biggest concern in 2012/13 was that acute hospitals made no improvement in assessing and monitoring the quality of the care they provided.
‘Hospitals did not improve their assessment and monitoring of the quality of the care they provided. There was also no improvement in safety and safeguarding, or in treating people with dignity and respect.
‘We were alarmed to see that there were fewer hospitals where patients were always treated with dignity and their privacy and independence respected.’
This week Jeremy Hunt announced a string of reforms, including jail for doctors and nurses involved in neglect and fines for hospitals that cover up mistakes.
The appalling neglect that cost hundreds of lives at Mid Staffs from 2005 to 2009 has put hospitals on notice not to repeat the same mistakes
The Health Secretary admitted that cruelty had been allowed to become ‘normal’ in the NHS but he promised to transform it into one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Grieving families said his plans were inadequate, while nursing unions demanded drastic increases in staffing levels to keep patients safe.
The CQC’s report is based on 35,000 inspections of hospitals, care homes, GP practices and dental surgeries last year.
It identified poor care in one in ten hospital wards or departments and in a fifth of all care homes.
The percentage of inspections that led to hospitals being given warning notices because patients were being put at risk rose from 3 per cent to 6.5 per cent.
Dr Johnny Marshall, of the NHS Confederation, which represents health service managers, said the lack of improvement was disappointing. ‘It is absolutely critical that we continue to focus on delivering the highest levels of care and compassion across the entire health system in hospitals, in communities and at home,’ he added.
‘There is no excuse for not treating every patient as an individual, with the highest levels of dignity and respect.’
Peter Carter of the Royal College of Nursing, said: ‘Far too often we have seen decisions based on financial necessity rather than patient need, with services being removed from hospitals while community teams are still pitifully short-staffed.’
The NHS has lost 6,642 nurses since May 2010 and 752 in the past month alone, according to the NHS Information Centre.
Source Mail Online