Alternatives to Litigation: Public Inquiries

Under what Circumstances are Public Inquiries into Healthcare Ordered?

Because Public Inquiries aim to be as thorough and open as they possibly can be, they take a lot of time, and they are very expensive.  For this reason, they are only ordered in cases where something very significant has gone wrong.  They tend to be reserved for "scandals" which have provoked a high degree of media coverage and public interest.  In healthcare, a Public Inquiry is, in the words of one article, "a last resort, to which we turn only when other models of inquiry have failed or are unlikely to be successful".

Building A Safer NHS For Patients (a document that sets out the Government's plans for promoting patient safety) states that

From time to time there will be major issues in the NHS which draw attention to a matter of serious public concern either because of the scale of the problem or because it is an issue not previously examined systematically. In these circumstances, the Secretary of State for Health has in the past commissioned inquiries using specific statutory powers to allow subpoena of witnesses and documents. Most such inquiries have taken evidence in public.

There will continue to be a small number of very serious situations involving health services which raise major public concern, important ethical questions or fundamental issues of health policy. In such circumstances the Secretary of State for Health may decide to establish an inquiry under one of a number of statutory powers which enable witnesses or evidence to be subpoenaed.

Cases which involve small numbers of patients, and do not raise significant questions about the way in which healthcare is provided are extremely unlikely to be the subject of a Public Inquiry.  There is a wide range of other types of investigation that can be used in these cases: these are described elsewhere on this site.

Public Inquiries into healthcare that have taken place recently

Public Inquiries always have a high profile (that is what they are there for).  Inquiries you may have heard of in particular, in the last few years, include:

  • Serious breaches of security and illegal activities at Ashworth High Security Hospital in 1995-6 (1999)
  • The management of the care of children receiving complex cardiac surgical services at the Bristol Royal Infirmary between 1984 and 1995 (2001)
  • The conduct of Dr Harold Shipman, a general practitioner in Hyde, Greater Manchester, who was convicted in January 2000 of murdering 15 patients (2001)

The Michelmores clinical negligence department were very heavily involved in the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry: for further details, see below.