Will hospital reports hit confidence ?

Will the watchdog's bite scare the NHS ?

The Government is determined to increase public confidence in the National Health Service. Openness, transparency and a readiness to admit mistakes are part of that.

But one wonders whether that confidence is undermined by three reports - two from the Commission for Health Improvement and one from the NHS executive - released today.

The new Commission for Health Improvement - the CHI - was set up a year ago as a watchdog to oversee NHS standards.

Cruelty

They accuse a hospital in Carlisle of a "shocking culture of cruelty" in which elderly patients were systematically abused - as a result of a "whole systems failure" involving both management and staff.

Link to News Online's story on the CHI report on Garlands Hospital

Wrong Kidney

While a second report, into the Carmarthenshire NHS Trust, was instituted after a patient died when surgeons removed a healthy kidney instead of a diseased one - the CHI says the Trust subsequently drew up an action plan to tackle the problem, but was slow to implement it, and has wider criticism of inadequate management.

Link to News Online's story on the CHI report on the Prince Phillip Hospital, Llanelli

Dysfunctional

A third report, by the NHS executive,

into one of Britain's leading hospitals, the John Radcliffe in Oxford, says a "dysfunctional" management failed to address mounting personal and professional tensions within the heart centre there.

Link to News Online's story on the NHS Executive report on the John Radcliffe Hospital

Dr Peter Homa is the new Director of Health Improvement - and he rebutted the charge that his new body could well harm confidence as much as bolster it.

He told us that what his team had found

Dr Peter Homa

at the Garlands Hospital in the Lake District was "profoundly disturbing": and that the management there had welcomed "hard hitting, clear recommendations"

But the findings there - and in Wales - underlined what he called the "fundamental importance" of the whole health service working together to improve the service.

And he denied that his body would become a health equivalent of Ofsted - the controversial Education Inspectorate. With the right approach, he insisted, that couldn't happen: and that meant using working doctors and professionals to bring proper understanding and ensitivity to the work.