EXPOSED: Epidemic of NHS secret justice
Blundering GPs handed ‘slap on the wrist’ warning at behind-closed-door hearings ...as grieving families and MPs accuse watchdog of failing to put patients f irst
HUNDREDS of doctors who made serious and sometimes fatal mistakes have been allowed to accept ‘soft touch’ written warnings in secret meetings designed to spare them the ‘anxiety’ of appearing before a public tribunal.
GPs who committed deadly medication errors, failed to spot killer infections or misdiagnosed patients with catastrophic results are among those given warnings.
The sessions, held by the doctors’ watchdog the General Medical Council (GMC), took place behind closed doors.
As a result, they have not had their competence scrutinised in public ‘fitness to practise hearings’ – and their failings have often gone unreported. Critics last night accused the GMC, which regulates Britain’s 240,000 doctors, of failing in its principal duty to protect patients.
The news comes a week after we revealed how Dr Joanne Rowe received a warning after she refused to see five-year-old asthmatic Ellie-May Clark, who later died. Ellie-May, from Newport, South Wales, suffered a fatal asthma seizure less than six hours after the GP had turned the girl and her mother Shanice away because they were four minutes late for an emergency appointment.
A 294-word warning, issued to Dr Rowe last May, can be found only by delving into her medical registration on the GMC website.
Details of the tragedy came to light only after The Mail on Sunday submitted a Freedom of Information request for the names of all doctors given warnings in 2016.
Dr Rowe was one of 94 and, of those, 18 received a warning after public hearings with the remainder given after private meetings.
From 2013 to 2016, 499 doctors received warnings, of which 434 were issued after private sessions. The warnings are noted on their medical registration for five years, after which they are deleted.
Among them was Dr Paul Bisnar, who sent Zawdie Bascom, 38, home with painkillers after the father of three was carried into A&E by his sons in agony. Dr Bisnar diagnosed an upset stomach – but Mr Bascom actually had an inflamed appendix, which burst and killed him.
Mr Bascom’s widow Nawanda, from East London, described the GMC procedures as a ‘cover-up’, adding: ‘They’re cutting public hearings to put less stress on the
doctors – but what about the grieving families?’
Devastated father George Smith, from Kirkcaldy, Fife, had to refer GP Bala Gundati to the GMC when the local health board refused to do so. Dr Gundati had failed to spot the signs of meningitis which killed Mr Smith’s son Gregor, 13.
He said: ‘If she’d acted sooner, Gregor would still be here today. It was such a needless waste of a young life and it still hurts that she avoided a public hearing.’ Incredibly, the GMC has actively encouraged doctors who have made mistakes – or in some cases broken the law – to avoid public hearings by agreeing to accept a ‘sanction’ such as a warning instead.
The approach was adopted after a 2011 GMC consultation, which stressed the importance of making disciplinary procedures less stressful for doctors. It stated: ‘Public hearings often result in a great deal of stress and anxiety for both the doctors involved and the witnesses. In some cases, allegations are reported in the press which later turn out to be unfounded.’
Hearings were also ‘extremely costly’, noted the GMC, which doctors fund through compulsory fees.
The consultation argued: ‘Where a doctor is willing to accept the GMC’s proposed course of action … the case for a public hearing is hard to make.’ It then asked: ‘Do you agree that, where there is no significant dispute about the facts, we should explore alternative means to deliver patient protection other than sending cases to a public hearing?’ Unsurprisingly, 83 per cent of respondents agreed, according to a GMC report on the outcome of the consultation.
Andrew Davies, the Conservative leader in the Welsh Assembly, who has taken up Ellie-May Clark’s case, called our findings ‘shocking’. He said: ‘To think this doctor [Dr Rowe] quietly got away with a slap on the wrist, because a soft-touch system allows it, is unforgivable.’
And Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, a member of the Health Select Committee, said: ‘One has to ask if the GMC is putting patient safety first, if it is failing to hold public hearings for so many serious cases.
‘At the very least it should ensure doctors whose mistakes lead to deaths go before fitness to practise tribunals. The patients’ families deserve nothing less. The GMC should remember that justice needs to be seen to be done. At the moment its disciplinary procedures are not transparent enough.’
GMC chief executive Charlie Massey said: ‘Patient safety is at the heart of everything the GMC does and we do not hesitate to take strong action where we judge that doctors who have made mistakes continue to pose a threat to patient safety.
‘Any doctor who receives a warning, which can be seen by any patient and employer, has had to account for their actions and prove they have taken the steps necessary to remedy them.’