Health Matters | Paul Corrigan's blog

In the last few days several people who have commented about my blog regarding Mid Staffs have said something to the effect of “What about an apology from you for your part?” and of course, given the depth and the breadth of what happened at Mid Staffs, everybody that had a role in the NHS over those years has to look carefully at what they did and did not do.
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1: “The Government is wrong to be fragmenting the NHS.”

A few weeks ago Andy Burnham made an important speech to launch a major consultation on health policy. What he has described as the biggest consultation on health and social care policy by the Labour Party for 20 years is obviously an important activity. Over the next few months I am sure there will be fierce debate about what should and should not go into the final policy but every Monday for the next few weeks, I’m going to discuss the policy proposals in a particular way. Read the rest of this entry »

Since he became Prime Minister David Cameron has made three statements to the House of Commons in response to important reports into failures of the state. The first was the report on ‘Bloody Sunday’, the second on the Hillsborough report and the third, yesterday, was the Francis Report.

Of course all three of these reports investigated very different sorts of failures. But importantly all three of them relate to failures by government to listen to what they were being told, again and again, by the public. In all three cases the public, who were telling the truth, saw cover-ups by different parts of the state.

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The Francis report is published today. Nowadays even the most sensitive legal documents are heavily leaked – with the Guardian seemingly having a copy on its front page last week. However despite the leaks it’s always best to wait for publication before commenting on the actual content.

I want to make some wider points here. These have occurred to me whilst looking at the press preparing for Francis. It is already clear that a number of newspapers will construct from the findings an analysis that chimes with their fundamental hatred for the basic principles of the NHS.

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A few weeks ago Alan Milburn outlined how he saw that one of the main outcomes from the Francis Inquiry into events at Mid-Staffs should be much much greater transparency of information about the NHS for the public outside. In 2013 very few people would disagree with that. But there will be important disagreements about what this means.

Last week Liz Kendall from Labour’s Shadow Health team spoke to a National Voices’ conference about how she felt we needed to extend transparency. One of the points she made was that the public didn’t just need more numbers about what is going on inside the NHS, but that the NHS needs a form of knowledge about what is going on inside that has been partly created by patients and the general public outside. Read the rest of this entry »

The last few days have seen some very important disagreements about the extent to which NHS hospitals need to be changed. Last week’s Guardian was full of the call for change from Bruce Keogh, the National Commissioning Board’s Medical Director. He took the fight to politicians by saying that by defending local interests MPs risked consigning their local hospital to “perpetual mediocrity”. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I drew the analogy between the role of the administrator in the NHS and the fact that someone with the same name – administrator – winds up High Street retail chains like HMV. The point I was trying to make was that the announcement of an administrator for HMV was recognised as being the end of the line for the current organisation of a failed chain of stores. However when an administrator  was announced for South London Healthcare Trust it was seen as another opportunity to develop the trust with the minimal amount of change. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I highlighted some of the work that Macmillan Cancer Support services provide for NHS patients and how their investment in increasing patient capacity for self-management will save NHS resources and improve patient care. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last few months I have been bemused at how the politics of the NHS have tried to grapple with the report of the administrator sent in to deal with the failure of South London Health Care. It seems to me that the Government have positioned the role of the administrator entirely incorrectly.

This was brought into sharp relief by last Tuesday’s announcement that an administrator had been sent into deal with the failure of HMV. Look at the press and media comment on the role of this administrator. Read the rest of this entry »

Some commentators have been kind enough to suggest that I played a role in developing the NHS reform policy that created Foundation Trusts.

Some commentators on this blog have made the same point – only in a very different way – suggesting that this reform was the start of a process that the Tories have continued with their current reforms, and that all of this is bad for the NHS. Read the rest of this entry »