NHS must end culture of secrecy, says Health Secretary

12 comments

1. Yes, it’s a public service. The public needs to know of all coverups, bullying, racism, nepotism, bias, poor performance, death rates, etc

2. My local health board covers up so many cases of negligence it’s unbelievable. From killing unborn babies, letting people go deaf, re-prescribing medication to people when they have previously had serious adverse effects to it…

3. No chance. The NHS is like a cult; you either accept it as it is or you want the American system.

   These are the only two choices Reddit tells me

4. I love the NHS. As an idea it’s probably the best thing about this country – I think that not having the “does my insurance cover this, and will it bankrupt me anyway?” question hanging over you provides real peace of mind, compared to what our American cousins have to put up with.

   We must resist every attempt to push us towards that awful model.

   But the secrecy problem is real. British civic society is inherently and reflexively secretive, and the NHS is no different, with its bullying and ineptitude and cover-ups, etc.

   The problem with humans running a system as complex as the NHS is that human failings, which will happen no matter how hard you try to prevent them, often occur at the most difficult moment in the life of a victim – when they’re sick in hospital (or, when they’re unwell but aren’t being taken seriously).

   NHS staff must be able to blow the whistle with confidence internally and externally when they encounter bad behaviour or other problems. I don’t want this to become some bad-faith wedge issue that moneyed interests deploy to worm their way even further into the service, which will inevitably be to our detriment. The profit motive is corrosive – just watch any of John Oliver’s videos about the US health and regulatory systems.

   (Or think of the UK water company scandal, or Post Office scandal, or Grenfell Tower scandal… You get the idea.)

5. The Tories have been in control of the NHS for 12 years. If they haven’t in the past, they never will 

6. Things such as the charging of Dr Bawa-Garba impress this upon the service. You tell people not to cover things up, but when they’re honest they go to jail. When excess deaths at an NHS trust hit the headlines, it’s not the people who’re responsible whose careers get hurt, it’s whoever’s in charge of the trust during the press attention (often a few years later).

   Our culture doesn’t seem likely to change this: consider the arguments about which politician/s from which party to blame for the post office thing…none of them in reality, but bad press hurts careers, fair or otherwise.

   We’ve got a system where the case is often: ‘you’ve done nothing wrong, help coverup & lie or get fired.’

   Bawa-Garba cooperated openly, got fucked…doctors learnt to say whatever the hospitals lawyers tell them to.

7. The secrecy and coverup method is wider than the NHS. No politician will support the ending of it. It is used by rich people or those who can access public funds, to coverup their offending, whether financial or personal / sexual. It’s a development of techniques from tax avoidance. The Law Society and Bar council support it. The SRA can’t do anything while it bows to the Law Society. Ending it would mean ending all that contractuel embezzlement and money laundering through London and nothing for the lawyers to get a cut of. Basically not gonna happen.

8. Yes just as labor are about to take power now the tories worry about transparency!

   we spend £1bn a year on making up for massive life changing cock ups in maternity care

   The budget for maternity care is £3bn!

   We spend 1/3 our maternity care budget on fixing the mistakes!

   This won’t stop overnight and Labour will inherit this shit show and it will take years to fix

9. Why is the model for aircraft safety not built into the NHS I.e all near misses, errors, etc must be reported by statute, in order to continuously improve processes and procedures?

10. I want to end the culture of incompetent health secretaries.

11. “How can your husband’s job not be a conflicting issue with being a Health Secretary”

    “Its ok i recuse myself from influence”

    Yea right

12. Feels like a snuck premise. Whats the reasoning for suggesting the NHS has a culture of secrecy?