By John Tingle
Two key NHS (National Health Service) organisations have recently produced reports. NHS Resolution has produced its annual report and accounts.The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has produced a report on the experiences of adult in -patients in NHS hospitals.These reports are excellent for real-time trend analysis and important patient safety and clinical negligence trends are identified.
By John Tingle
The House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts (Committee of Public Accounts) has recently considered the issue of managing the increasing clinical negligence costs in NHS (National Health Service) hospitals in a report. They make a number of important recommendations as well as putting into the spotlight a number of developing trends and themes. The report is linked to a report recently published by the National Audit Office on managing clinical negligence costs.This report is closely examined by the Committee with witnesses giving oral and written evidence.
The high cost of clinical negligence litigation
The report begins with a statement on the high and increasing cost of clinical negligence which sets the scene and tone for the rest of the report The Committee has raised concerns about the rising costs of clinical negligence on a number of previous occasions going back as far as 2002. The questions and answers of witnesses called by the Committee do reveal some very interesting and telling insights into the issues and the problems faced. Read More
By John Tingle
The Health and Social Care Regulator of the NHS in England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published its latest annual report on the state of health and adult social care in England 2016/17.When reading the report ,the reader is left wondering whether the NHS as currently established can cope adequately with current future health and social care demands. The NHS turns seventy years of age next year and there is much to celebrate but there is also a lot of increasing concern about NHS efficiency, sustainability, safety and quality. The number of people aged 65 is projected to increase in all regions of England by an average of 20 % between mid-2014-and mid-2024.People are also increasingly presenting with complex, chronic or multiple conditions. The total number of people with Dementia is projected to reach one million by 2027.We are also living longer. Life expectancy at birth, 2013-2015 is 79 years for men and 83 for women. All these factors test the model of NHS care that we have and its long-term sustainability.
Like the previous year’s annual report,this year’s warns that the health and care system is operating at full stretch and that care quality in some areas is deteriorating. The situation can only get worse unless more resources are made available or new ways of the NHS operating are devised. The NHS faces an infinite public demand for its finite resources. Read More
By John Tingle
NHS Resolution, an arm’s length body of the Department of Health that manages clinical negligence and other claims brought against the NHS in England, have just published a report on cerebral palsy legal claims. These claims are complex and result in large awards of compensation. In 2016-17, whilst the obstetrics specialty accounted for only 10% of the 10,686 claims received, they represented 50% of the £4,370 Million value of claims received.
Once case may cost £20 Million or more for one child. The report shows that the same errors are often being repeated and that key patient safety lessons go unlearned. The report analyses the data held by NHS Resolution on its claims management system on compensation claims for cerebral palsy that occurred between 2012-2016.There were 50 claims between this period that were suitable for review with a potential financial liability greater than £390 Million. This figure excludes the costs of defending the claim and the wider cost impact on the NHS as a whole. The results of the report are split into two parts. Part one looks at the quality of the serious incident (SI) investigation reports and part two looks at arising clinical themes. Read More
It’s fair to say that patient safety and health quality reports in recent years have tended to focus on what is going wrong in the NHS and what needs to be done to put things right.We have had some dramatic health care systems failures which have resulted in unnecessary deaths of patients.The naming and shaming of errant health care providers has taken place and we have now through the CQC (Care Quality Commission), a much more open, stronger, intelligent and transparent way of regulating health care quality than we have ever had before.
The health care regulatory system does seem to be making a positive difference to NHS care judging from recent CQC reports with some good examples of health quality and safe care practices taking place. Other trusts can learn from these practices.
The CQC have just published a report which includes several case studies illustrating some of the qualities shown by care providers that are rated good or outstanding overall. These hospitals known as hospital trusts in the NHS have been on a journey of improvement some going from special measures to good (CQC inspection ratings). The views of some of the people involved in the care improvement initiatives are stated in the case studies revealing important insights on improvement strategies and the nature of the problems overcome. Read More
By John Tingle
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) have recently published a report on the economics of patient safety.The report is in two main sections, section 1, the cost of failure and section 2, reducing harm effectively and efficiently.
Section 1 focuses on a review of the literature in the area. The reports begins by making the point that health care has always been and continues to be, a risk-laden activity:
“While modern medical sciences can certainly do more, the risks of complication, error and harm are commensurately greater.” (p.9)
The report states that adverse health care events can happen at any point of the patient’s journey and can vary between care settings. Similar causative factors can be attributed to most types of harm.On the world patient safety stage, the report states that despite global efforts to reduce the burden of patient harm in developing countries, the situation does not appear to have changed over the past 15 years. WHO data is cited from 2000 which indicates that two –thirds of all adverse events occurred in low-and middle income countries. The risk of patient death as a result of an adverse event appears to be much higher in developing countries with some estimates suggesting that as many as one in three adverse events result in the patient’s death. The report does suggest some ways forward in avoiding adverse health care events in developing countries. Read More