Patients have died or have been harmed because of care failures at an under-fire NHS trust which staff fear could become the next major health scandal, whistleblowers have claimed.
An investigation by The Independent and Channel 4 into Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, which treats more than a million patients across Greater Manchester, has uncovered allegations that patients have died in surgery without adequate investigation, while others had their cancer diagnosis delayed.
Some patients are alleged to have been left dying or in pain in overcrowded A&E corridors or have been forced to undergo invasive treatments that might have been avoided if their care had not been delayed.
And some staff claim they have been encouraged not to submit reports to managers when safety issues arise, while others say their accounts of serious harm and death are shut down or not investigated properly.
Retired consultant, Dr Glyn Smurthwaite, who blew the whistle over rogue spinal surgeon John Bradley Williamson, found to have harmed dozens of patients at the trust between 2009 and 2014, including some who had misplaced screws causing chronic pain, warned that the deterioration in patient care and the trust’s attitude to harm was not a recent development.
“I believe this is potentially bigger than the Mid Staffs scandal in terms of the magnitude of harm. For decades, Salford Royal [before the creation of the NCA] had seemingly executive-led and failing governance processes,” he said.
“The organisation has a malevolent intent to defocus from the true problem and just tick a box. We’ll do an investigation because the system forces us to generate an investigation… but they’ll close it, investigate it, file it, and no one will ever see it, and there’s probably no meaningful outcome from it.”
Source: The Independent, 19 August 2026
Further reading on the hub:
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment