Bugging The Nhs: The Care Crisis

By Author: Joe Wareham
Total Articles: 9
Comment this article

Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health in a speech to the Kings Fund, claimed that poor care had become the biggest problem in the NHS .
Listing a catalogue of the terrible examples of care which have been reported in the press, including the abuse of residents in care homes at Winterbourne View and Ash Court Care Home and the failure to monitor patients in hospital, he warned that the worst aspect was that they were not isolated incidents. He said whilst we take for granted the improvements in medicine and in life expectancy, real progress doesn't happen unless our patients are treated with dignity and respect, and cases of clinical negligence are simply unacceptable.

Mr Hunt has proposed a number of ways to address the problems in care and promised that top officials would be accountable if care was not good enough; he has also commissioned an independent study to look at how assessments of treatment and care and advocated the need to focus on staff training and staff support through leadership programmes. It will be interesting ...
... to see whether these changes will really impact on care provided and whether hospitals cope with reductions in staffing levels and the squeeze on finances.

In the main, the care delivered in hospitals and care homes is excellent but patients and families need to be confident about the care provided in all facilities.