NHS: Keogh Review

Baroness Masham of Ilton Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I can certainly use my best endeavours through the usual channels with regard to my noble friend’s latter question. On his first point, he is absolutely right. That is what led us to believe that aggregate hospital ratings, provided that they are produced in a sophisticated and careful way, will be very informative to the general public and to patients in a local area, and to professional staff within the health service. The Healthcare Commission, of old, used to produce aggregate ratings. They fell into disuse and, I have to say, into some disrepute, because they were so broad brush as to be meaningless. When we asked the Nuffield Trust to look at this area, it told us very clearly that, as long as we adopted a nuanced and sophisticated approach so that what was assessed was not just a hospital trust or an individual hospital within that trust but rather the performance of individual medical teams and units within a hospital, we would provide useful information to the public. However, that information needs to be accessible.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

If the chief inspector, when visiting failing hospitals, finds a lack of senior sisters on the wards and a shortage of doctors working in emergency medicine, what is he going to do about it? Does the Minister realise that there is a serious shortage of emergency medicine doctors?