10 June 2010
A public inquiry will be held into the failings found at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has said.
This follows an initial inquiry by Robert Francis QC, whose February report found serious deficiencies in many aspects of the trust’s work.
Francis will also chair the new inquiry, but this time will have powers to compel witnesses to attend and speak under oath. He will report in March 2011.
The Department of Health said the inquiry would ‘seek to expose how events at the trust went undetected and unchallenged for so long by the wider regulatory and supervisory bodies responsible for monitoring [it]’.
Lansley said he would also take immediate action to tackle the culture of secrecy, fear and bullying among staff at the hospital, which was identified by the previous inquiry.
These would include guidance on NHS treatment of whistleblowers, the end of targets that lack clinical justification and moves to give patients the power to rate hospitals and doctors.
Lansley said: ‘We know only too well what happened at this hospital – what we need to know is how and why.
‘The NHS must prioritise the people it serves and listen to the doctors and nurses who work in it.’
He said Mid-Staffordshire was ‘a tragic story of targets being put before clinical judgement and patient care, focusing on the cost and volume of treatment not the quality’.
NHS Confederation director of policy Nigel Edwards said: ‘We understand the decision to hold a full public inquiry into why patients treated at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust hospitals received such poor care [but] it is vital that a further public inquiry does not hinder or slow down the drive to improve the quality of care provided.’
