Colchester: did NHS targets get more care than patients?
The unfolding scandal at the NHS Trust in Colchester has a tragically familiar ring to it. The trust has been put into special measures by the regulator, the Care Quality Commission, which says patients were put “at risk of serious harm” because waiting times were falsified. The police have also been called in.
It’s a complicated story, but in a nutshell several staff told the CQC they’d been “pressured, bullied or harassed” to change data to make it look as if targets had been met. In fact, patients had been treated late – and for cancer sufferers delays can make the difference between life and death.
Serious, possibly deadly failings at NHS trusts are sadly nothing new. You have only to recall the Mid Staffs scandal to know that. There, as in Colchester, there had been concerns raised about unusually high mortality rates.
And what’s also a recurring theme is the pernicious effect centrally-imposed targets can have in the NHS.
Five years ago, surgeons said elderly patients with hip fractures were being let down because hospitals were diverting resources to meet targets. Back then, the Department of Health said “targets will not be allowed to override what patients themselves choose or what is in the patient’s best clinical interests”. We don’t know all the details yet, but any inquiry into what may have happened in Colchester will need to ask whether targets became more important than patients.
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Politicians of every stripe may have to take some responsibility.
To be fair, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt published a new mandate a year ago which abandoned a whole load of targets on increasing patient satisfaction, reducing premature deaths and improving the quality of life for people with long term health conditions. At the time, he said he’d no longer be “micro-managing” the NHS.
But the Colchester allegations, raised by a whistleblower, date from the end of 2011, and the CQC’s inspection which triggered today’s announcement and police investigation took place in August and September this year. That means that either the coalition is failing to hammer home its determination not to let targets stand in the way of excellent care, or its message hasn’t yet got through.
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