Clinical negligence concerns raised after hospital performance revelations

Posted 08/03/2010

It has been claimed that patients could be being misled by hospital data which shows that institutions are performing well.

According to information seen by the BBC’s Panorama programme, hospitals are being allowed to rate their own performance in categories such as patient care and many are doing so wrongly.

When the Care Quality Commission carried out on-the-spot checks, it was found that 60 per cent had wrongly rated their own performance, with many claiming to be ‘good’ or ‘very good’ when they should have scored poorly.

Dr Foster Intelligence representative Professor Brian Jarman said this could mean that hospitals are deliberately misleading patients and playing down serious incidents, perhaps including clinical negligence.

“My view is that patients do not realise that hospitals are self-assessing. I could hardly believe it until I read it,” he remarked.

Sandra Patton, a clinical negligence specialist at Ashtons Legal, commented: “It is critical that, if the government claims that they give choice to patients to pick the best hospitals, the information on those hospitals is accurate.

“Very few patients will realise that information on performance is produced by the hospitals themselves rather than by an independent watchdog, and it defeats any idea that patients can benefit from having these statistics. There appears to be no incentive for all hospitals accurately to rate themselves – why should they want to if performance is falling below par?”

It was recently discovered by Civitas that the NHS has overspent its budget by £130 million, meaning that hospitals are likely to face cutbacks in the coming months.