An official report carried out by the Health Service Ombudsman has revealed that the NHS has made ‘devastating’ and ‘shocking’ blunders involving patients of all ages.
From young to old there are examples, revealed by the report, of clinical negligence that in the most severe cases has lead to the preventable deaths of patients.
It is the Health Ombudsman’s job to investigate complaints made by families over alleged negligence they have experienced at the hands of the NHS that are deemed to have not been fairly looked at by the services at fault.
Dame Julie Mellor outlined in her report, which looked at 126 NHS complaints left her concerned about the lack of care and compassion in some cases and in other cases she found how examples of basic mistakes had led to ‘catastrophic harm’ to patients.
This is Dame Julie’s second report, following one earlier in the year, where she pledged to publish regular summaries of her findings.
The complaints within the latest report cover the timescale between April and June and I deemed to be the most damning.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Dame Julie said: “These investigations illustrate the devastating impact that failings in the NHS can have on the lives of individuals and their families – they cover from the very young to the very old, and they cover all types of health care, hospitals, GPs, and dentistry.”
The report, which was released last week, coincides with figures reported by the Ormskirk Advertiser, over concerns about the high death rates at Ormskirk hospital and clearly outlines a baseline problem within how the NHS is being governed.
Scott Rees and Co’s Catastrophic Injury Partner, Chris Walker, expressed his concerns, saying: “It is clear that not enough is being done within the NHS to ensure that hospitals learn from the mistakes of the past.”
“The NHS is a wonderful thing and something this country should and is proud of but there it really is time that the training of staff and handling of complaints were looked at.”
“Over the past year the finger has been pointed at legal firms for increasing the level of clinical negligence claims being brought against the NHS, yet this report clearly shows that there is a deeper lying problem.”
“At the end of the day if improvements were made and mistakes were being learned from then the number of instances where negligence is taking place would decrease and therefore there would be no claim to make against the NHS.”
“Hopefully the revelations of the dossier will have a positive effect and those that are in charge of running the NHS will look towards improving the service they offer and avoid compromising the standard of care that can be delivered by health service.”
Image source(s)
1. Wikipedia; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NHS-Logo.svg
