Health Service needs Reformation to make it honest

THE NHS is undergoing changes as radical as the Reformation and must put honesty at the heart of its culture, Jeremy Hunt has said.

It had been treated as a “national religion” in which anyone questioning the orthodox view could be left “facing the Spanish Inquisition”, the Health Secretary said. He made the comments as he outlined reforms to improve patient safety.

Mr Hunt warned the British Medical Association that the changes would mean consultants having to work at weekends. They would also include:

A new system for investigating patient safety incidents, modelled on the Air Accident Investigation Branch

An obligation for GPs to inform patients about the rating of their local hospital and its waiting times

A promise that every hospital trust will publish figures for avoidable deaths from next March

Buddying arrangements between hospitals and international centres of excellence, including a US centre which improved safety by allowing any employee to raise the alarm if there is a risk of a serious mistake.

Citing a former Tory chancellor, Mr Hunt told a conference at the King’s Fund: “Nigel Lawson famously described the NHS as a national religion.

“The problem with religions is that when you question the prevailing orthodoxy, you can end up facing the Spanish Inquisition. NHS orthodoxy was that criticism should not be made public because it would ‘damage morale’. We now see that was wrong.”

The Health Secretary added: “Intelligent transparency is becoming a ‘Reformation moment’ for the NHS as the public appreciate that a system with the confidence to be honest about failings is a system that does something to put them right.”