NHS chief pledges to repair damage

Feb 6 2013

The head of the NHS Confederation has pledged a relentless drive to repair damage to public confidence in the health service on what he called a "sad and shameful day" for the organisation.

Mike Farrar, chief executive of the membership body for health service commissioning organisations, said the Francis report was a much-needed ward-to-Whitehall assessment of care failures that had been "hard-hitting but fair".

He spoke after health campaigners said the report, if implemented, would represent "the biggest advance in patient safety and patients' rights in the history of the NHS".

He said: "We owe it to every patient, family member and carer to commit to making sure these sorts of tragedies do not happen again.

"It is up to all of us in the NHS to take responsibility for putting things right. We cannot externalise responsibility for standards of care to Government, politicians or regulators or anybody else."

Mr Farrar added: "Everyone in the NHS must now consider these recommendations and find ways of acting on them.

"There will of course be practicalities, including cost effectiveness and whether all recommendations do what they say on the tin. But let's not lose sight of the big picture.

"This is an opportunity to make the NHS safer, more compassionate and fully accountable to the people it serves."

A legal obligation for medical staff to own up to mistakes and be open with families of patients should be implemented by the Government as part of a "new dawn" of transparency and openness in the public health body, the Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA) said.

The report into standards by Robert Francis QC, sparked by failures at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, contains a raft of measures to guarantee openness, transparency and learning, according to AvMA chief executive Peter Walsh.