Are private treatment centres safe? We need to know!
ACTIONtemplate letters:1 Secretary of state2. Your MP |
Private sector clinics doing work for the health service could be less safe than the NHS. That’s the fear taking hold after new evidence cast doubt on the safety record of some of the private treatment centres with contracts to carry out NHS work.
The NHS Support Federation needs your help (see below) in demanding an urgent safety review, after the BBC’s Panorama program uncovered shocking evidence of three men who died after gall bladder surgery and another death in North West England, all in ISTCs (independent sector treatment centres) – private clinics forced on the NHS as part of the government’s commercialisation agenda.
In one tragic case Dr John Hubley died after surgery because the private Eccleshill treatment centre in Bradford did not even keep blood on site. At an inquest, the coroner said that “Dr Hubley would have survived on the balance of probabilities had his surgery been carried out at the Bradford Royal Infirmary rather than at Eccleshill,” and that “surgery is about safety, not about what can be got away with”.
In a damning comment one senior doctor, Michael Parker, President of the Association of Leparoscopic Surgeons, said he would not want to be treated in an ISTC because of the lack of emergency facilities in case something went wrong. He said he would rather be treated “right in the middle” of an NHS hospital.
Poor information on safety
But almost more disturbing than the deaths is the lack of any attempt by the government to keep track of whether ISTCs are safe for patients. In an interview health minister Mike O’Brian made the astonishing claim that the government doesn’t bother to monitor death rates in private treatment centres in order to cut bureaucracy.
He said: “We have sought to reduce bureaucracy and that has a price. That price is that all the statistics that we previously easily got aren’t necessarily flowing in at the same rate because we’re spending more money on doctors and nurses than we are on the people who collect statistics.”
This is misleading at every level. In fact statistics for ISTCs have never been made public because of the curtain of commercial confidentiality that comes with private involvement. And it is wrong to imply that the NHS has stopped collecting statistics on its own death rates.
Cutting bureaucracy cannot be used as an excuse for compromising safety – death rates are not an incidental statistic but a fundamental piece of information.
What can we do?
The NHS Support Federation believes that the minister’s statement shows remarkable complacency, putting patient safety at risk. It is an outrage and we ask you to join us in demanding a proper assessment of whether private treatment centres are safe.
Please use (and adapt) our template letters to the Secretary of State of Health, Andy Burnham, and to your MP, asking for any information on incidents at ISTCs to be made public and for an urgent safety review to be carried out.
The ISTC program is at a crossroads as many of the original contracts expire. As well as safety concerns, the NHS Support Federation believes the centres have seen waste of taxpayers’ money on an epic scale and have fragmented the NHS. We call for an end to the policy of using the private sector to do clinical procedures that the NHS could do more cheaply and, crucially, more safely, and for the money to be reinvested in NHS care.
Panorama can be viewed in full here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n462s/Panorama_Dying_to_Be_Treated/