I tweeted last night that I was worried that the furore over supposedly\u00a0unnecessary\u00a0deaths in the NHS might be - as some\u00a0academics\u00a0warned Jeremy Hunt - an unfounded claim.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Then Steve Walking appeared in my timeline - as he\u00a0often\u00a0does on such things - and drew\u00a0attention\u00a0to two blogs he has written on this issue. I will not repeat them, but simply suggest you should read his blogs here<\/a> and here<\/a>. I consider them essential reading.<\/p>\n But if you really won't just\u00a0consider\u00a0this, from Steve:<\/a><\/p>\n The idea that 400-1200 \u2018excess\u2019 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\u00a0become<\/strong>, to all intents and purposes, a fact.<\/p>\n But it is an idea without any basis in fact.<\/strong><\/p>\n There were [in fact]\u00a0<\/span>no<\/strong>\u00a0\u2018excess\u2019 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 \u2014 or, in the words of the independent clinical expert who led the \u2018Independent Case-Note Review\u2019 (ICNR) into each individual, contentious death at the Trust:<\/span><\/p>\n maybe one<\/strong><\/p>\n This information has been in the public domain since at least 2010 \u2014 but I doubt if you could find a single reference to it in the mainstream media. \u201cOne person might have died!<\/em>\u201d does not sell newspapers, or gain viewers, in the same way that \u201c400-1200 unnecessary deaths!!!<\/em>\u201d does, I guess.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There were deaths at Mid Staffs - and Steve explains at length why they may have been recorded<\/strong>\u00a0aberrationally, but the clinical evidence does not support the claims that there were hundreds or thousands. That's a political myth.<\/p>\n I'm not\u00a0saying\u00a0there is no need for continually striving for improvement. Far from it: there is.<\/p>\n And I am not saying that some trusts are not as good as others; as a matter of fact that must be true.<\/p>\n But I am saying that this situation is very likely being seriously exploited for private gain, and there is no excuse for that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I tweeted last night that I was worried that the furore over supposedly\u00a0unnecessary\u00a0deaths in the NHS might be – as some\u00a0academics\u00a0warned Jeremy Hunt – an
Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nhs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}