Published 3 July 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2706
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b2706

News

MPs attack NHS for putting finances and targets ahead of patient safety

¹ London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

MPs have warned that England’s current patient safety policy has important failings. The government needs to act urgently to ensure that cases of bad care, such as happened at Mid-Staffordshire Foundation NHS Trust (BMJ 2009;338:b1141, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1141), are not repeated, they have said.

The health select committee’s report on patient safety says that incidents are under-reported, largely because of the NHS’s persistent failure to eliminate the "blame culture." It says that the government remains largely unsupportive of whistleblowers and that the Department of Health needs to improve this situation.

The committee acknowledged that the government has undertaken a number of important steps to tackle safety, such as creating the National Patient Safety Agency. But it said that too often NHS boards pay more attention to governance, finances, and targets than to putting the safety of patients first.

The committee’s chairman, Kevin Barron, said, "Our report highlights many areas . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Importance of near misses

Benjamin W Lamb and Kamal Nagpal
BMJ 2009 339: b3032. [Extract] [Full Text]

Hospital trust sacrificed patient care to financial matters, commission says

Oona Mashta
BMJ 2009 338: b1141. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Lamb, B. W, Nagpal, K. (2009). Importance of near misses. BMJ 339: b3032-b3032 [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

nhs bureaucracy affects patient safety

David H.S. Reid
bmj.com, 6 Jul 2009 [Full text]

Prolonged timescales for the introduction of safety-critical new medical technologies may be inevitable

Philip J Bickford Smith
bmj.com, 13 Jul 2009 [Full text]

Finances and targets ahead of quality and safety

David Levine
bmj.com, 13 Jul 2009 [Full text]

Patient safety: a work in progress

Benjamin W Lamb, et al.
bmj.com, 16 Jul 2009 [Full text]

Online poll

Find out more>>