Minister: ‘Prosecute NHS directors’
pharmafile | July 5, 2013 | News story | Sales and Marketing | CQC, DoH, Lamb, Mid Staffs, NHS
Directors responsible for failures in care such as those seen at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust should face prosecution, according to health minister Norman Lamb.
He was speaking as the government introduced a consultation which would see directors held personally and criminally responsible for abuse or neglect of patients on their watch.
The consultation suggests that it should be easier for the regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), to prosecute providers and their directors for “clear failures to meet very basic standards of care”.
The idea is to close what the Department of Health believes is a legal loophole which means providers ‘responsible for appalling failures in care’ can escape prosecution.
At present the CQC can only prosecute in cases where it has previously issued a warning notice to the provider, with which that provider has not complied.
Other key proposals are the introduction of a compulsory background check for directors – taking in an individual’s honesty, integrity, competence and capability – which could see them removed from post by the CQC if they are deemed unfit.
CQC chief executive David Behan said: “The power to prosecute, along with a ‘fit and proper’ person test for directors, gives people who use services greater assurance that poor care will be challenged and that they will receive safe and effective care.”
The consultation is aimed squarely at rebuilding public trust in the NHS – something of a theme this year, the low point of which so far was what health leaders called a ‘sad and shameful day’ for the NHS after February’s final report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry.
‘Remarkably, there have been no prosecutions for failures in care since the CQC was established,’ the DH said in a statement.
Critics might suggest this is in fact far from remarkable given that the CQC itself has been mired in controversy over its own apparent failure to adequately police the very people it is meant to be overseeing.
Behan has been publicly backed by health secretary Jeremy Hunt to improve the organisation but this will not be easy: in January, the House of Commons health select committee’s report on the CQC said it needed to sort out the way it was run ‘as a matter of urgency’.
The CQC hopes its appointment of three new inspectors – of hospitals, care homes and general practice – and the introduction of Ofsted-style ratings for establishments plus more rigorous inspections will help.
Lamb insists: “These proposals are part of a wider package of changes to how CQC regulates health and social care providers.”
Adam Hill
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