Patient safety - will there be a big step forward?

The list is a dismal and shameful one - Mid-Staffordshire, Morecambe Bay, the rogue surgeon Ian Paterson, maternity care at the Shrewsbury and Telford.

All are patient safety scandals involving tragic stories of life-changing mistreatment of patients and, in some cases, the loss of loved ones.

Pledges have been made that patient safety will be put front and centre of health policy. New regulators have been put in place. But now yet another review has found the health system in England to be "disjointed, siloised and defensive" and that the culture needs a shake-up.

It has called for a new patient safety champion with legal powers to be put in place.

The plan is to have an individual with "real standing" outside and independent of the system, accountable to the parliamentary Health and Social Care Select Committee.

The Commissioner would be expected to take up and investigate patient complaints where appropriate, and hold organisations to account - the review had stated that the failure of health authorities to respond to concerns was a recurrent theme.

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Source: BBC News, 8 July 2020