Stop the barbarism and start the reform

Maurice O'Brien • Published 4 Mar 2010 11:00 0 Comments

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WHEN will we stop treating the NHS like some spoiled brat who must be indulged to the full to ensure all the toys don't disappear from the pram in some epic tantrum?

It makes sense for a Labour-run Government to tiptoe reverently round it when one of its legends founded the thing, but the Tories are now so petrified of any revival of their 'nasty party' image that they'd rather suffer major internal organ damage than murmur a word of criticism.

The Boy Dave once described staff in the NHS as unsung heroes and, whenever I've been in need, I have indeed mostly found myself and mine in the caring hands of many an unsung hero or heroine. But not all NHS staff are heroes. They can't be. If they were then the horrendous scandal of Stafford Hospital wouldn't have happened.

The standard of care, albeit care was the quality most desperately lacking, wasn't even Dickensian. It was positively barbaric.

Reading the Francis Report it's hard not to weep. Imagine the torment of the sick being driven by thirst to drink from flower vases; meals dumped deliberately beyond the reach of the bed-bound; helpless patients literally stripped of their dignity, left naked in full view of the whole ward; families cleaning the toilets or taking home filthy bed linen for washing. Not forgetting, of course, that Robert Francis, QC, calculates between 400 and 1,200 unnecessary deaths occurred there over a three-year period.

Sure they can blame the ludicrous fetish for meeting targets which have no regard for the fact that the NHS should be counting human beings and not beans. The obsession of the Stafford Hospital governors with achieving the Holy Grail of foundation status clearly blindfolded them to both patients' needs and staff misdeeds.

Certainly that mentality is fertilised by a cheating culture which fast tracks casualties through A&E into 'clinical assessment units' which are in reality corridors or store cupboards, keeps patients in queues of ambulances to avoid starting another clock by letting them on the premises, or gets shot of them afterwards by using a departure lounge in the car park.

But what's hardest to swallow is that, whether in pursuit of impossible goals or not, that culture persuaded members of the caring professions to behave abominably or heartlessly turn a blind eye.

Completely unacceptable, said the Prime Minister, someone must pay. He's right there. Us. The Mid Staffs NHS chief executive's £400,000 payoff and his £85,000-a-year pension for life.

Enough. Time to scrap the feelgood slogans, start thinking the unthinkable and begin reforming this bottomless pit.

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