Hiding the Truth
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) which is the regulatory and inspection body for the NHS in England and Wales - was described as 'not fit for purpose' the other day following a 'cover-up' over the deaths of babies and mothers at an NHS Foundation Trust in Cumbria.
Just for information the equivalent body in Scotland is called HIS - which is short for Health Improvement Scotland.
Now the report into CQC states that the previous senior management team were 'totally dysfunctional' - which is clearly a very serious charge.
Yet we don't know who these people are or where they have gone - or whether they are now in senior positions in other parts of the NHS - elsewhere in the UK.
The problems within CQC were brought to light after an independent report by consultants from Grant Thornton - who were commissioned to look into a CQC review of the University Hospitals Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust.
The trust faced more than 30 compensation claims over the deaths of - or injuries to - mothers and babies up to 2010.
The Grant Thornton report concluded that the NHS watchdog engaged in a deliberate 'cover-up' - with the CQC suppressing a critical internal review into the maternity unit - which is scarcely believable.
But there you have it - one public service (the NHS) fails its customers and along comes another public service (an NHS watchdog) which doesn't bite or even bark - but simply covers the whole thing up.
How depressing.
In fact, it reminds me of my days of the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) - when some of the teaching members used to share blood curdling tales about some of the terrible things that went on - allegedly - in their schools and classrooms.
Yet when I would ask the obvious question - 'Why don't you raise merry hell about these issues, if they're really as bad as you say?'
The answer was always the same - 'We don't want our school and its teachers getting a bad name and reputation - because mud sticks'.
Which is nonsense to my mind - since things can only get worse if you sweep bad practice and ubacceptable behaviour under the carpet and tough though it is - the way to drive up standards is to be ruthless about exposing the truth.
The CQC commissioned report redacted the names of the 'not fit for purpose' managers - allegedly for reasons of Data Protection, but David Titcombe whose son Joshua died nine days after his birth said that the report:
"Lays bare a multitude of extremely serious failures, quite hard to believe" - before adding that the names of individuals in the report should not have been redacted because - "There is a question about whether that reflects the way the NHS should be going, in terms of openness and transparency."
Incredibly, the Grant Thornton report describes a CQC official as saying that he was ordered by a senior manager in March 2012 - to destroy his review because it would expose the regulator to public criticism.
The report goes on to say that CQC officials who discussed how to handle the findings of the review included one senior manager who stated:
"Are you kidding me? This can never be in a public domain nor subject to FOI [a freedom of information request]. Read my lips."
So exactly how in the name of everything that's good and noble about the NHS - how can the names of these people remain undisclosed and how can they be allowed to walk away - completely unscathed?
That's what I'd like to know.
