Stafford: Cover-Up Hospitals Face Penalties

Hospitals which try to cover up failings that lead to deaths or patients being seriously harmed will have to pay the bill for compensation claims.

Under new moves to ensure patient safety, the Health Secretary said that any hospital that failed to be open with a patient about errors or failings could be forced to pay part or all of a compensation claim rather than the tab being picked up by the whole NHS.

The new rules will also see health organisations given an "explicit and consistent" duty of candour, which means they must tell patients and relatives where a mistake has led to death or serious injury and even inform them in cases of "near misses".

Failure to be honest will lead to action from the General Medical Council and the nursing regulator. Wilful neglect and giving false and misleading information will also be made a criminal offence.

Hospitals will also have to publish information on how many staff are on their wards on a new safety website from April, however, the Health Secretary did not introduce a minimum staff-patient ratio.

Speaking to the House of Commons, Jeremy Hunt said: "Nobody makes these mistakes intentionally but if you cover them up, lessons don't get learnt."

The measures, which Mr Hunt hailed as a "blueprint for restoring faith in the NHS", are part of the Government response to the Stafford Hospital scandal, where up to 1,200 patients are thought to have died needlessly as a result of poor care between 2005 and 2009.

An inquiry by Robert Francis QC, into the failings, highlighted "appalling and unnecessary suffering" of hundreds of people who were "routinely neglected".

Mr Francis made 290 sweeping recommendations for healthcare regulators, providers and the Government in his report - 204 have been adopted by the Government.

Mr Hunt said what had been striking on reading the Francis Report was that staff at the hospital came to see the treatment there as normal. He said: "Cruelty became normal in our NHS and no one noticed."

He added: "We want doctors or nurses to think it's in their interest to speak out if there's something that worries them."

A "fit and proper persons test" will be introduced so managers who have failed in the past will be barred from taking up posts elsewhere in the system.

Every patient will also have the names of a responsible consultant and nurse listed above their bed.

Julie Bailey, who founded campaign group Cure the NHS after her mother Bella suffered appalling care at Stafford in 2007, said she was "disappointed" with Mr Hunt's statement because of the lack of statutory under-pinning for many of the key measures.

She said: "We were told we'd get 80% of those recommendations, we really only wanted five - five key recommendations from Robert Francis.

"The most important for us was protection for whistle-blowers because we know throughout the NHS, that people are trying to speak out that there's harm going on on their wards and they're not being listened to and very often they're persecuted just for speaking out.

"So protection for whistle-blowers, in statute, was critical to us so that then anybody can speak out, whether doctor or nurse, and action is taken."

Christina McAnea, head of health at the Unison union, said: "The Government has missed another opportunity to introduce fixed, safe nurse-to-patient ratios.

"There is safety in numbers when it comes to caring for patients and this one step would bring about a revolutionary change on the wards.

"They are recommending a 'toolkit' to set minimum staffing levels but what will happen if these are ignored when wards are under pressure, which is almost a daily occurrence in today's NHS?"

Mr Francis welcomed Mr Hunt's response to his report saying the measures would contribute towards a "new culture of caring" in the NHS.

Read the full Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry report here: Executive Summary , Volume 1 , Volume 2 , Volume 3 , Key Facts and Figures .