CCGs have duty to demand providers be open about mistakes, say MPs

The NHS must become so open and transparent that raising concerns becomes a matter of routine and the role of whistleblower becomes redundant, the House of Commons Health Committee says in a report on the recommendations made by the public inquiry into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.1

Stephen Dorrell, the former health secretary who chairs the committee, said that the report of the inquiry by Robert Francis QC into widespread failings in care at the trust between 2005 and 2009 should deliver “an electric shock to the system.”

The Francis report found failures at every level up to the Department of Health, which allowed “terrible and unnecessary suffering” by patients to go undetected for years.2

Francis described a culture in which doctors felt …