NHSE overrules trust and orders second review into patient harms

NHS England has ordered an independent review into patient safety and governance concerns at an acute trust which had been resisting calls to take this step, HSJ has learned.

The intervention at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust comes after pressure from staff and local MPs, who believe more extensive investigation is required into cases of patient harm within the trauma and orthopaedics division.

The broad issues were first revealed by HSJ in November, with documents suggesting several patients were harmed after leaders failed to act on multiple concerns being raised about a surgeon.

The trust has already commissioned one external review. This reported last year and found the service to be riven by “internecine squabbles”. However, the review was overseen by trust executives and the terms of reference were focused on incident reporting and culture within the department.

It is understood that some consultants have since been pushing for further investigation into specific cases where patients were harmed, as well as concerns that managers or clinicians who were accused of failing to tackle the issues have since been promoted to more senior positions.

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Source: HSJ, 2 March 2021