I tweeted last night that I was worried that the furore over supposedly unnecessary deaths in the NHS might be - as some academics warned Jeremy Hunt - an unfounded claim.
I also noted that the fact that a smallish proportion of HNS trusts were delivering below average results was exactly what the law of averages would suggest likely. That is, inevitably and always the case.
Then Steve Walking appeared in my timeline - as he often does on such things - and drew attention to two blogs he has written on this issue. I will not repeat them, but simply suggest you should read his blogs here and here. I consider them essential reading.
But if you really won't just consider this, from Steve:
The idea that 400-1200 ‘excess' deaths took place during a period from 2005-2009 has been repeated so often, with such a complete absence of dispute (unless you knew where to look), that in the public consciousness it has become, to all intents and purposes, a fact.
But it is an idea without any basis in fact.
There were [in fact] no ‘excess' deaths at Mid Staffordshire NHS during the 2005-2009 period in which the news media and anti-MSNHS campaigners claim there were 400-1200 of them — or, in the words of the independent clinical expert who led the ‘Independent Case-Note Review' (ICNR) into each individual, contentious death at the Trust:
maybe one
This information has been in the public domain since at least 2010 — but I doubt if you could find a single reference to it in the mainstream media. “One person might have died!” does not sell newspapers, or gain viewers, in the same way that “400-1200 unnecessary deaths!!!” does, I guess.
There were deaths at Mid Staffs - and Steve explains at length why they may have been recorded aberrationally, but the clinical evidence does not support the claims that there were hundreds or thousands. That's a political myth.
I'm not saying there is no need for continually striving for improvement. Far from it: there is.
And I am not saying that some trusts are not as good as others; as a matter of fact that must be true.
But I am saying that this situation is very likely being seriously exploited for private gain, and there is no excuse for that.
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I’ve just read part of Steve Walking’s blog. I started in a sceptical frame of mind given the coverage on the BBC of a government report. As I read more, I could see this appeared to be a sound counter argument.
My question -to the universe, rather than to you, Richard, is why it takes a man writing a blog in his spare time, to unearth this, and not the reporters of the BB C or the Guardian who are supposed to have an understanding of the background?
The implications are quite chilling. In war the first casualty is truth we are told.
Does this mean we are in a different sort of war today? Attacks by people who disguise their real identity and purpose? And we are not talking about Muslim Jihadists here.
Excellent questions
I have no answers
But maybe you also explain why I write this blog
Ian
Richard is becoming forgetful :-). He used one word that largely answers your questions in a blog a week or so ago, following comments about it from me and another regular commentor, Andrew Dickie, I think, in a blog a few days earlier: HEGEMONY.
The fact is that the degree of hegemony now enjoyed by the key elements of the neo liberal system (as we might most appropriately refer to it) ensures that all but the most maverick journalists – which patently excludes anyone who works for the BBC (apart perhaps for Paul Mason), Sky, and even, it has to be said, many of those who work for The Guardian – know exactly what they are expected to say and how to frame it.
I could go on but won’t. As Andrew Dickie remarked in a comment to a previous post (which unfortunately I don’t have time to find and point you to), if the reading of Antonio Gramsci’s work on hegemony was made part of the national curriculum the whole edifice of neo-liberal bollocks, including such examples as Jeremy Hunt’s ongoing and wilful misrepresentation of what goes on in the NHS, would soon be undone. Unfortunately – and precisely because of the hegemonic position our ruling neo-liberal elites enjoy it never will.
So yes, this is a war against that hegemony. And in hegemonic systems – as in war – the first casualty is also always access to the “truth”.
Agreed
Sadly, Ivan, I have come to that conclusion although I wish it wasn’t so.
Given that it is, I try to do what I can including recommending this blog which has done so much to inform my thinking.
I too fume at media coverage that simply replays the dubious and highly political spin that is this government’s chosen and, it has to be admitted, mightily successful weapon in its quest to cling to power.
Having read the initial reports on The Keogh Report, I was appalled by the coverage on BBC news last night, which made only fleeting mention of that report’s highlighted qualification that the basis for estimating unnecessary deaths was flawed because it took no account of such elementary considerations as the location of the hospitals and the economic circumstances prevailing in that location.
Having damned BBC news, I must commend Emily Maitlis on Newsnight who did take up the qualification and did not give Mr Hunt the gentle ride I was half expecting.
I thought Maitlis was excellent in that interview
As I tweeted at the time – she looked at Hunt as if he was dirt on her shoe
Stealthily the Right’s privatisation agenda for the NHS moves forward. They have put forward the “400-1200 unnecessary deaths” as a truth claim to undermine the NHS. It is a monor miracle that this organisation continues to function despite the reorganisations over the last twenty years.
The object of these reorganisations appears to be nothing more than to break the NHS up, so that economies of scale are destroyed and introduce inefficiencies rather than eliminate them.
The siren voices on the Right can then be a position to argue convincingly that the public service would be far more efficient if it was privatised. This is nothing more than a thoroughly deceitful and crooked plan to divert tax revenues into private pockets. The truth is that once our health service is in private hands, the vast majority will experience a worse, more costly, less accountable service, where the “unnecessary death rate” will soar. The result will be a pale imitation of health care in the US.
“the vast majority will experience a worse, more costly, less accountable service,” as they do now with the railways, gas and electricity, and of course money.
Steve Walking blogged about an email one of his readers had received from Sir Bruce Edward Keogh with regard to the media frenzy over the claims of 13,000 avoidable deaths in some NHS hospitals. The reply from Keogh was “Not my calculations, not my views”.
http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/national-media-keogh-says-13k-nhs-deaths-keogh-er-no-i-dont/
This was jumped all over by the right and the blog declared conspiracy and lefty propaganda. In the mean time both Sky News and the BBC ranted endlessly about the soon to be released report, Sky claiming they had “acquired” a report.. but never really saying what report. After the Guardian posted it’s article..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jul/16/keogh-review-nhs-hospitals-no-mid-staffs
..both channels tempered their reporting of the Keogh report. Now they are using “Trial by anecdote” against the NHS. The BBC interviewed Keogh yesterday, for about 4 minutes, I guess he was not the ideal person for their agenda to talk to about the report in his name!
I echo your suggestion that people should read Steve’s two blog posts. Then look at this and see where we are currently, shouldn’t be too hard to spot.
https://twitter.com/marcuschown/status/355636198183682048/photo/1
Yes, I saw this ‘thousands of deaths’ claim on the cover of various right wing newspapers, both at the weekend, and today. Surprise, surprise, it’s a lie. Let’s be frank, this is a propoganda campaign by the right against the NHS and Labour.
Now that the Tories, with the help of the Lickspittle Democrats, have got their Health and Social Care bill on the books, it’ll be full steam ahead on destroying the NHS as a free at point of use publicly funded service. The political right loathe anything in the public sector so to get rid of the NHS will be a real achievement as far as they’re concerned.
But because the NHS is so well regarded by most people, they have to discredit it first by giving the impression it isn’t working, and by putting the blame for that on Labour. Hence the totally dishonest abuse of statistics by Hunt and Cameron. Expect a lot more of this, and, probably, expect a feeble response from Labour.
Let’s face it, the right have used every dirty trick in the propogandists manual (author J.Goebbels) in their attack on the welfare state, so they’ll do the same here.
Looks like it is more ‘dodgy dossier’ syndrome.. I must admit, the flood of terrible data pulled me in as well and I’m normally resistant to this. perhaps it is a result of hearing so many sad individual cases. Looks like the Government and the halucinogenically grinning Hunt are riding on the back of more misinformation like the vilification of benefit claimants. The specter of fascism is looming all over this.
The other BBC reporting scandal is the way they discuss the success, or otherwise, of the benefit cuts in ‘moving people into work’!
I’ve listened in vain for some mention of the impossibility of all 2.5m unemployed (let alone the far greater numbers of under-employed) ‘moving into work’ when there are only 500K vacancies. It is now implicit that those on benefits are there because they choose to be!
Richard, can I point out that it’s Steve Walker, not Walking.
The scare-mongering that has taken place is diabolical & I note that todays Daily Mail, Telegraph & Times are still at it.
Oh sorry – I know that! Must be an autocorrect on my typing, not spotted on re- reading
I will win a very award going for poor proof reading
I’m pretty hopeless at proof reading too but it made me smile to read “a very award for poor proof reading”.
Don’t type on an ipad is the moral of that one
‘I will win a very award going for poor proof reading’
Whatever that ‘very’ award is, Richard, you certainly will win it 🙂
Just to prove the point!!!
There are wide variations in care at NHS hospitals. My wife had the unfortunate experience of needing to go into the maternity wing of a hospital in the north-west of England. The level of care she saw there was awful and she begged me to remove her despite the fact that the hospital wasn’t happy for her to leave.
In the 24 hours she was in the hospital she saw numerous things, including a nurse attempting to give medication to the wrong patient and women left completely unmonitored despite being substantially overdue. Upon returning home our local hospital called to collect the records for the tests they had conducted, but were told there was no record my wife had ever been there in the first place. In the end our local hospital had to do everything all over again. The hospital in question isn’t on the recently released list, in fact it claimed to have won awards for its maternity unit.
My uncle, who was completely blind, went into another hospital in the north-west. He picked up MRSA and developed bed sores. They only looked at the bed sores when he started to refuse all food until they did something about it. Quite honestly there is no excuse for anybody in an NHS hospital to develop bed sores. We were taught about the dangers of bed sores and how to prevent them when I was a child in St John Ambulance 30 years ago.
I don’t need any convincing that there are poor levels of care in hospitals that aren’t under special measures. I am fortunate that my local hospital provides a very good level of care.
Such things happen when you massively under-resource the NHS, I agree
Sure, maybe none of these individuals actually died at all. Taken up by UFOs? Santa Claus? Time travel? Easter bunny?
All as plausible as the blog above…..
Your contempt for those who have lost relatives is staggering
Of course people died: 50% of all people die in hospital
Read the data: Keogh does not agree with the claim of unnecessary deaths and the facts don’t support it
It is you and the Tory media who is trivialising this issue – and I think that is disgusting
I started yesterday quite reassured by Andy Burnham denouncing the awful BBC coverage which so obviously followed the agenda set by the tories. There was one excellent speaker who showed that the problem, apart from obvious under-resourcing, was of the management of individual units. So far so good. But by the evening they had wheeled out a woman representative of a patients organisation (who looked the model of a tory ‘matron’) loading all the blame on Burnham. This was followed by the announcement that Andy Burnham was not available.
A horrible day for a Labour supporter – and the news that Labour is now level-pegging with the tories. (Yet in other ways I had an absolutely splendid day.)
‘Matron’ was Julie Bailey of the ludicrously named ‘CuretheNHS’ & who despite claiming to be non-political is found only ever to criticise Andy Burnham. Her twitter account is a sight to behold.
Steve Walker has written several blogs about Julie Bailey and ‘Cure the NHS’, they and her would definitely not be happy with this blog post by Richard judging by the evidence.
http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/?s=Julie+Bailey&submit=Search
There is an opposition debate in progress now on managing the risks in the NHS, already Hunts spinning backed by an unusual number of Tory MP’s for such a debate, all armed with prepared Q’s from the whips office it seems.
Unfortunately, corporate-capture has infected the Labour party with a fatal infection.
Even intensive care will not halt the slide into corporate corruption.
One must suppose that their “corporate sponsors” have led them to believe that ditching the unions will lead to increased business sponsorship. Will I laugh when Labour ditches the unions, and then gets ditched by biz ?
There’s nothing quite as stupid as a Labour politician with pound/dollar/euro signs in their eyes.
Betcha Cameron dumps on the idea of state financing of political parties then….
So let’s look at the health scenario…..Obamacare takes-off, with widespread forecasting of dramatic lowering of health costs in the US (appendectomy US=$15,000 : UK=£20000)….so the attackmeisters of the right immediately shift into high gear, always suported by their little yapping press terriers, whose owners are also in the money biz.
Meanwhile, putting little snippets on right-wing blogs (Staffs hospital not bad at all) immediately gets dumped and the right-wing troll machine again gets into attack mode.
Labour, led by Little (big) Ed, is still in “we’re going to get rich guys” mode….
Remind me does a univ education always lead to terminal stupidity ?
Or is it generated by their “advisors” being in the pay of Big Wallets ?
Plasma Resources UK was, until today, owned by you the taxpayer. It supplies, among other things, one third of the blood services used by the NHS. The Tory Party decided to put the state-owned blood supplier up for sale in January sparking a furious bidding war among American hedge funds and venture capitalists. Today, it was sold to Bain Capital for £200-230 million. Bain Capital are a US venture capitalist firm founded in 1984 by Mitt Romney and others who had previously worked with the firm Bain & Company. You can find out a little about the latter firm by clicking this link (click here).
http://www.greenbenchesuk.com/2013/07/today-nhs-owned-blood-services-were.html?m=1
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