NHS bosses could be jailed for up to two years if found to be lying about poor care.<\/p>\n
The recently announced plans are part of a campaign against the culture of cover-up in the NHS, which began in the wake of the Stafford Hospital scandal.<\/p>\n
Hospitals could also be fined \u00a310,000 if they lose a clinical negligence claim and cannot prove that errors have been admitted and an apology made.<\/p>\n
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the plans \u201csend a strong message that covering up mistakes will not be tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peter Walsh, chief executive of charity Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA), echoed this sentiment, saying: \u201cIt sends a clear message that this is socially important and we don\u2019t want to see this sort of behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the move does have critics, amongst them Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association\u2019s governing council. He said doctors may not want to report concerns for fear of reproach:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need a culture of openness within the NHS, not where speaking up can leave doctors feeling harassed or facing punitive action\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n
Duty of candour<\/b><\/p>\n
Hospitals are now supposed to tell a patient if a mistake has been made regarding their care, even no harm has been caused. An apology should also be made, and this must be put into writing if the patient requests.<\/p>\n
This policy is called a professional duty of candour and was introduced to England and Wales in November 2014.<\/p>\n
Has the health service lied to you?<\/b><\/p>\n
If you believe you were subject to negligent medical care but the clinician or hospital has failed to admit a breach, please get in touch with us today. We will be able to say whether or not you have been the innocent victim of medical negligence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NHS bosses could be jailed for up to two years if found to be lying about poor care. The recently announced plans are part of a campaign against the culture of cover-up in the NHS, which began in the wake of the Stafford Hospital scandal. Hospitals could also be fined \u00a310,000 if they lose a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[376,436,40,22,377],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hospital-negligence","tag-duty-of-candour","tag-hospital-blunders","tag-hospital-mistakes","tag-nhs-duty-of-candour","tag-professional-duty-of-candour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":427,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions\/427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glynns.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}