Downing Street Says » Basildon Hospital

Asked if the Prime Minister still had full confidence in the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the PMS said that the Prime Minister thought that patient safety must be a top priority for the NHS and all patients deserved the highest quality of care. The PMS said that the Prime Minister also wanted to stress that these were isolated incidents and they were in stark contrast to the vast majority of outstanding hospitals in the country and the many dedicated, caring and highly professional staff and managers that delivered an excellent standard of care to patients every day.

Both the regulators, the CQC and Monitor, had recently been given new powers to help intervene in failing hospitals and that was exactly what had happened in the case of Basildon and they were now taking action.

Put that the Prime Minister did have full confidence in the regulators, the PMS said that the regulators had done their job and were now taking action. Asked if the Prime Minister had a view on the fact that there was information on the CQC’s website that was 18 months out of date, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister’s primary concern was that patient safety was paramount and that we had regulators in place to do the job of going into hospitals and monitoring standards. The key thing now was that those regulators now took action and that’s what they were doing.

Put that the Prime Minister must be concerned that there was such a clear failing in the system, the PMS said that this was an isolated case and there were outstanding hospitals throughout the country with very dedicated staff.

Asked if the Government was in danger of sending the wrong message of suggesting that everything was fine when mistakes had clearly been made, the PMS said that the role of the regulator was to identify where patient safety was not up to the standards expected. The Prime Minister’s view was that this was an isolated case and action was now taken to address the shortcomings.

Asked if the Prime Minister was concerned at all about the failures in the system, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister’s view was that the regulators were doing their job and tough action was being taken. Asked if there would be a crisis in confidence in the regulatory system after this, the PMS replied that the regulatory system had identified these shortcomings some time ago and action had been taken.

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» Friday, November 27, 2009

Basildon Hospital

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