NHS managers need disciplinary body, latest inquiry urges
Andy Burnham, the health secretary, who announced a fresh inquiry - the third - into the appalling standards of care at the Staffordshire hospital, said he would consult on the proposal, which was welcomed by the Patients Association.
"We must end the situation where a senior NHS manager who has failed in one job can simply move to another elsewhere," Mr Burnham said.
It was, he said, a "long-standing anomaly" that incompetent doctors and nurses can be disciplined and even struck off, but that there is no equivalent scheme for NHS managers, nor for the non-executive directors who, for salaries of a few thousands pounds a year, help make up the boards of NHS organisations.
The call to give NHS management the status of a new profession came as the inquiry by Robert Francis QC catalogued the most dire standards of care at Stafford hospital, which included needless deaths and staff leaving patients "sobbing and humiliated" while lying in their own faeces.
The case "highlights the need for a proper system of ensuring the accountability of executive officers and non-executive directors" of NHS organisations, the inquiry said.
The NHS Leadership Council has already been examining the possibility of a regulatory body for NHS managers along the lines of the General Medical Council, which regulates doctors.
Nigel Edwards, head of policy at the NHS Confederation , said there was a good case for accrediting managers - which would establish, among other things, that they had had no major failures in the past - but was much more sceptical about full-blown regulation.
Both he and John Restell, general secretary of Managers in Partnership (MiP), the managers' union, questioned whether clear regulatory standards could be defined for good management as they are for doctors and nurses. Good human resources practice would go a long way to addressing managerial problems, Mr Edwards said.
Mr Restell said: "There is a risk of a big bureaucracy. And there is nothing to suggest that regulation of individuals would have prevented the systemic failures seen at Mid-Staffs and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells [where patients died from hospital-acquired infections]. We would not want the public to be sold a pup."
There was also the risk that over-regulation of non-executive directors would deter good applicants, he said.
The new inquiry will look into the failure of communication that led Monitor, the trust regulator, to approve the hospital's application to become a foundation trust at the same time as the Healthcare Commission, the quality inspectorate, was becoming seriously concerned about the hospital's quality of care. It will also examine why the local primary care trust, which commissions the hospital's services, appeared unaware of how bad things were.
The department is aiming to produce a standardised measure of hospital death rates after apparently high ones first triggered the inspectors' concerns at Mid-Staffs. Disputes about how they are constructed meant it was "unsafe" to give any range for the excess deaths at the hospital, the inquiry found.
From:
Labels: Andy Burnham, health direct, health professionals, labour, National Health Service, NHS, red tape

