The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) is launching an inquiry into the best way of dealing with clinical failure in the NHS.
PASC believes that the way clinical failures are handled by the NHS and its watchdogs does not “foster positive outcomes or learning from mistakes”.
PASC chair Bernard Jenkin MP said: “There seems to be a culture of blame and of responding only to complaints, rather than an environment where clinicians can come forward and lay out the facts of things that have gone wrong, or express concerns, so that they can be investigated and lead to improvements.”
The aim of the inquiry is also to reduce the number of complaints about administrative and service failures in NHS England that go to the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman (PHSO).
“Right now the only outcomes after clinical failings seem to be another excoriating report by a health watchdog, litigation or the passing of badly handled complaints further up the chain to adjudicators of last resort like the PHSO, which reports to Parliament through PASC,” said Jenkin.
“We would like to examine the possibilities of new ways of reporting and investigating clinical failures that could being about positive outcomes and change at a much earlier stage.”
The Committee announced today that it will investigate ways of dealing with clinical incidents at a local level, by examining the effectiveness of existing approaches, identifying models of best practices, and exploring the potential benefits of a “new clinical accident investigation body”.