Michelmores fear that government may bring in private healthcare hit squads

Reports on the dirt and squalor revealed at a Basildon hospital may lead to further involvement of private healthcare companies in the NHS, claims a leading clinical negligence lawyer.

Laurence Vick is head of clinical negligence at Exeter-based Michelmores, and led the families’ legal team at the public inquiry into the Bristol children’s heart scandal ten years ago.

Since then he has campaigned for more transparency from hospitals on their standards and performance, and led the public debate on the involvement of private healthcare companies in the NHS.

He sees the immediate furore surrounding the scandal at Basildon as potentially leading to a knee-jerk reaction by health authorities to meet the problem. Already, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has defended its record on maintaining hospital standards, blaming its predecessor, the Healthcare Commission.

Only recently, the CQC assessed Basildon hospital’s standards as being ‘good’.

Laurence Vick fears that the response to Basildon and to other recent scandals involving hospitals’ clinical performance and hygiene standards may be to look to bring in ‘hit squads’ from the private sector.

‘We already have a hugely complex structure of healthcare management in the NHS, and my concern is that Basildon will only make it more labyrinthine,’ he says.

‘We really don’t want any more tick-box testing. At the time of the Bristol children’s heart scandal, that hospital could probably have come through such a test with flying colours.

‘The CQC already seems on the back foot on this, and claims that its new procedures to be introduced next year will be an improvement. But from what we’ve seen it’s more of the same.

‘Our fear is that, when these scandals keep happening, the response will be to send in hit squads from private healthcare companies, the very last thing we want since their record in working in the NHS is often dire.

‘We’ve had countless cases of botched surgery in private clinics carrying out NHS work. But the government’s track record suggests that this could be the next step.

‘The Bristol experience has shown that proper transparency really does change internal hospital cultures and bring about improvements. We have seen in examples such as Mid Staffordshire earlier this year that exposure to the public gaze can apparently work miracles. That hospital has improved immeasurably.

‘So the conclusion must be that so often these tragedies occur through lack of good mangament practice, which can seemingly be put right almost overnight.

‘That conclusion makes the scandal all the greater, if it means that patients may be dying because of petty inefficiencies and laziness by staff.

‘It’s up to the NHS to put its house in order and for the CQC to instigate a proper means of regular monitoring, which evidence shows can raise standards dramatically.

‘What we don’t want is private healthcare companies making more money at the cost of the patients the NHS is supposedly there to serve, in setting up more tick-box procedures which only make the system even more remote from its patients and only serve to put a brave face on an ongoing health disaster.’