Thirty-seven patients die needlessly each day in the NHS. Change is good, but patient safety must come first | Jeremy Hunt

I The Minister of Health was when NHS England was created. Although there are advantages to remove control over operational decisions, they have led to a huge and reverse productive evaluation. NHS has become the most worldy mini health care system. The hospital’s CEO often works on more than 100 operating goals, making innovation and change in the long run impossible. GPS have about 80 of them. as long as Cancel NHS England The replacement of the bureaucratic broader does not mean the political seizure, and Wesh is on the right track.

But I am concerned about something else. In a huge snowstorm of organizational change, there is a risk that the eyes will start from the ball when it comes to wider risk of patient safety. In December Patient safety watchA report developed by a team of people at the Imperial College in London, led Professor Ara Darzi. He suggested that if our standards are high, like the 10 % of the 10 % of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, less patients will die. Twelve of 22 patient safety standards are going in the wrong direction in the past two years. It is an invitation to wake up about the tragedy of the death that can be avoided, most notably Mirage Mills in her successful campaign Martha’s rule After the tragic loss of her daughter.

Why is this a source of concern? Because at the present time, tens of thousands of civil service employees began the process of re -introducing their jobs after NHS England. In 2013, I saw with the eyes of the turmoil this type of structural change. Therefore, my approval of experiments is not to let the organizational disorder distract its attention from bold work of ensuring that patient care standards on the confrontation line. No. 13500 deaths can be avoided A year is not just a census, it has been lost 37 patients every day. Thirty -seven families destroy their lives tragicly and without need. And an enormous cost for NHS because, According to OECDAbout 10 % of the cost of modern healthcare systems puts things in their right quorum, which could not be wrong. This is 15 billion pounds of savings, and no one does not agree with it directly in front of our eyes.

The biggest risk field is NHS Motherhood Units. The draft law on settling litigation cases for maternity cases has risen to Almost 2 billion pounds annually. In the contract until the beginning of the epidemic, NHS has made real steps to reduce the death of children and the processes of salvation, but the latest data indicates that they will return. Anxiety in particular is the ethnic variations involved: black women who are born three times more vulnerable than white women.

A major investigation by the midwife and activist society Donna Ocekinin in Motherhood services at Nutingham University Hospitals It reveals some horrific care failures. But the most worrying thing is that these failures seem part of the style: I found the same problems in SHREWSBRY and Telford in its 2020 report. In his reports on East Kent In 2022 and the Morestambi Gulf in 2015.

Each of these reports has identified preventive deaths, deficiency of employees and deep -rooted cultural failures such as excessive emphasis on the so -called “natural births” that lead in practice to delay the interventions that affect the need by obstetricians. It is true that the total employee numbers have risen and Long -term workforce plan NHS The number of training places for doctors, nurses and midwife has doubled. But if we will stop the children who die or become disabled because of the medical error, we cannot wait for the contract, it will take it to them to come.

What does it then need to happen? First, it is necessary that improving the safety of maternity be part of the 10 -year -old plan as it was in the last plan. That succeeded: between 2013 and 2019, the deaths of the period surrounding the birth decreased by 18 % From 6.04 per 1000 total births to 4.96 – equivalent to about 770 deaths per year. We also need a system to ensure that the recommendations of public inquiries, which is the investigation of independent health services (HSSIB) and secondary health services is already implemented. There must be a central warehouse of recommendations with general accountability about who is responsible for implementing any agreed date.

It is important to develop a 10 % transformation program of the boxes where the safety of maternity is classified by the CEC quality committee (CQC). after The mid -employees scandalWhich witnessed hundreds of patients dying as a result of poor care at Stavord Hospital, Bruce Q He led a national review of 14 NHS boxes with high death rates, which leads to 11 It is placed in special measures With high -level central support. Most of them quickly turned. Motherhood services need similar intervention based on strong and independent inspections by CQC, we need to see them again on their feet.

Finally – and most importantly – we need a renewed focus on dismantling the blame culture that makes it difficult for doctors to be open about errors and failure, thus making sure that the system learns the necessary lessons. This was the problem Fear in the aviation industryThis has made a dramatic progress in improving the safety of passengers. It has proven to be much more difficult in healthcare systems where death is definitely more normal. But there is no system that thinks more about the ethical issues involved in NHS – if anyone can solve this, then we are sure.

These waiting issues cannot be addressed even after setting new and better NHS structures. If England has the same levels of motherhood safety as Sweden, 1,000 children will live every year. Nothing would show better that NHS is really the conversion of the angle.

• Jeremy Hunt held the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Health later on health and social welfare, from 2012 to 2018

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