17.09.14
How fatal is poor NHS care?
David Prior, chair of the Care Quality Commission (CQC), has come under fire this week after writing an article in the Guardian stating that care and treatment provided by hospitals and GPs is so “dangerously” variable that poor care kills up to 10,000 patients a year.
Published ahead of the CQC's forthcoming annual report, State of Care, it is understood that the study supports Prior’s claim about too much care being “dangerously” variable.
In his piece, the former Conservative MP for North Norfolk, said: “This variation matters not just because many patients receive poor care, indeed many thousands die avoidably every year.
“No-one knows how many, but in hospitals it has been estimated to be anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000 people – not a statistic that any other area of human activity would be happy with.”
Prior, who was appointed by the government to lead the CQC in January 2013, added that this matters because variation strikes at the heart of the NHS and its “core principle that everyone should receive good quality care free at the point of delivery. In fact they do not”.
However, chair of the council at the British Medical Association Dr Mark Porter has rejected the claims by Prior. He conceded that while action must be taken to ensure safety, if poor care is uncovered, the majority of patients receive “world-class” care in the NHS.
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