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NHS managers should apologise to patients for failure

Submitted by Adrian Gaskell MCMI on Fri, 02/10/2009 - 13:39

Under new government proposals NHS managers could be forced to confess their mistakes and apologise if patients are harmed as a result of negligence on their part.

The new government proposals outline how managers would have to sign a legal "duty of candour".

Injured patients were paid £807 million last year as a result of medical negligence.

According to an article in the Guardian this week, government officials, including chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson and health minister Ann Keen, have already backed the proposals.

Ms Keen has told the campaign group Action Against Medical Accidents that the proposals would get "full consideration" and has suggested the plan could be in force by 2011.

A new report from the Imperial Centre for Patient Safety and Service Quality showed that around a sixth of patients treated by the NHS are misdiagnosed.

Clinical negligence specialist at Kester Cunningham John, Sandra Patton, said litigation would not be needed if doctors were more open about mistakes.

New proposals announced this week also include plans to freeze pay of NHS managers, according to the Times.

What do you think of these plans?  Should managers be so directly accountable to customers?

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Comments

Submitted by on Sun, 04/10/2009 - 10:11

I don't see why not. It would happen in the private sector.

Submitted by on Sun, 04/10/2009 - 17:50

I wonder whether a mere signature will do much to chance the real-life behaviour of staff?

Submitted by on Thu, 08/10/2009 - 08:57

Yes managers should be so directly accountable to customers. Even though NHS is improving its services thanks to a period of increased investment, people are still turned off to it due to its poor facilities and extremely long waiting lists, some of which are up to a year long. As an alternative, 7.4 million Britons are enrolled in PMI, that's over 12% of the total British population. With PMI, waiting lists are far shorter, you're granted access to a network of private hospitals and facilities that are in better conditions than most NHS facilities. So if these proposals are implemented then it will surely enhance the performance of NHS and people will be more attracted to NHS than PMI.

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