When the letters ‘NHS’ appeared to the world above the dancing nurses at the Olympic opening ceremony, many in Britain will have imagined two darker words hovering alongside: ‘Mid Staffs’. Few of those affected will have been able to forget what now seems to be one of the greatest scandals in the history of British health care. Its horrific details will be laid out in full next week when Robert Francis QC publishes his report into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.
What we already know about the level of care at the Trust is shocking — and goes far beyond patients left in soiled bedclothes. There was the case of the elderly patient left to bleed to death because a nurse failed to act upon the telltale signs of rising heart rate and falling blood pressure. The hospital seems to have recorded between 400 and 1,200 more deaths than would have been expected over a three-year period.
Had this happened in a private hospital, it would be described as one of our worst peacetime disasters: worse than Lockerbie, Hillsborough, Hatfield and Potters Bar put together. Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, would emerge as the lead inquisitor. Union leader upon union leader would reject the notion of ‘system failure’ and call for jail sentences — perhaps accusing shareholders of having blood on their hands. The government, too, would feel obliged to take action, terminating the contracts of other, perfectly good hospitals.
Yet when the Francis report is published on Wednesday, no one will call for the NHS to be closed down. No one will call for charges of ‘corporate manslaughter’. No one will argue that the disaster was the inevitable result of human laziness, recklessness or greed.
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