After Francis: Doing Justice
A National Voices paper on ensuring safe and high quality patient care
The Francis inquiry into failings at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust demands a full response which does justice to those who suffered and died avoidably at Stafford hospital and which leaves a fitting legacy.
This is everybody’s business: each health professional and organisation must consider its response.
It is also the business of the Government and the NHS leadership. The Government needs a plan for implementing Francis over time, which should be co-produced with the NHS, professional bodies, patient leaders and health charities.
Early action is needed to ensure that the lessons from Francis are manifestly embedded in the reorganised English NHS coming into effect on 1 April 2013. National Voices wants to see urgent progress on the following:
Honesty
• The Government should implement a statutory duty of candour for organisations to require them to tell patients when they have caused harm.
Openness
• There must be no “gagging” clauses.
• New whistle-blowing protection rights should be created for patients and their families.
Transparency
• Measures of clinical performance and measures of experience that matter to patients should be publicly available. These should cover individual clinical teams and they should cover all health specialisms and services.
• The NHS should make sure comparative information is accessible and meaningful. It should commission some of this from organisations, such as charities, who can ensure that it is understood by particular groups of patients and service users.
• Health and care organisations must gather and act upon comprehensive real time patient feedback – going well beyond the Friends and Family Test. All complaints data should be published.
• There should be a consistent, transparent and credible methodology for identifying and investigating serious shortcomings in safety and quality.
Published : 13th March 2013
Publisher : National Voices [ More From This Publisher ]
Rights : National Voices
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