Bad care

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.