Legal reforms must accompany government patient safety plans

The Secretary of State for health yesterday[i] referred to several patient safety initiatives, including the new Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB), legal ‘safe spaces’ for healthcare professionals providing information to investigations and the establishment in 2018 of a medical examiner service to independently review deaths.

Commenting on the announcement, the MDU’s head of professional standards and liaison, Dr Michael Devlin, said: “Initiatives to improve patient safety are likely to be welcomed by doctors who already have clear ethical guidance from the GMC to cooperate with and contribute to such enquiries.  We look forward to receiving further detail about how the HSIB will operate and in particular how it intends to share examples of good investigatory practice throughout the NHS. 

"Although it has been announced that legal ‘safe spaces’ will protect and support healthcare staff raising concerns and contributing to investigations, it is also clear that there is nothing to stop other bodies, for example an NHS trust disciplinary panel or the GMC, from collecting the same information independently and disciplining doctors and other healthcare staff.  Therefore, it remains to be seen whether the new measures intended to provide immunity to staff will in practice foster the culture of openness that will allow patient safety initiatives to flourish.

"We were also told yesterday that medical examiners will independently review and confirm the cause of all deaths from April 2018.  There is no detail about who the medical examiners will be, how they will be trained and funded and what their independent review process will consist of.  Until such further detail is available it isn’t possible to determine the future contribution medical examiners could make to patient safety.

"But we also need to be clear about what patient safety initiatives can deliver.  There is little evidence that patient safety initiatives alone lead to lower rates of litigation which is why the MDU is campaigning for legal reforms to tackle the unsustainable spiralling cost of claims in England and Wales. In future, this will ensure that compensation payments to patients will remain fair, but also proportionate and affordable.  The MDU’s proposed legal reforms could result in money that would otherwise leave the NHS being available to be invested in publicly-funded health and social care services."

Details of the MDU’s suggestions for law reform to deliver fair compensation can be found at www.themdu.com/faircomp.

[i] Announcement by the Secretary of State for Health, 9 March 2016, available here