We all love the NHS. Indeed, over recent years, it has taken on the status of a national religion. This has been reinforced by the incredible work done by front line workers during the pandemic.
But it is not perfect. The Ockenden Review of the experiences of mothers in Shrewsbury and Telford NHS follow previous exposures of repeated failures in the quality of care and governance in the trust over the last couple of decades. In looking at the experiences of 1,486 families between 2000 and 2019, the review exposed the avoidable deaths of at least 12 mothers and 201 babies. The reason? An obsession with natural births over the welfare of mothers and babies.
The truth is, we need to be able to question the NHS and hold a bright light to it. As an MP, I get to hear of problems directly from constituents. But there are a whole load more that are dealt with directly. Yet when we start talking about the NHS, opposition parties start talking about NHS privatisation and reorganisations, with the result that the NHS continues with its problems, politicians terrified to start a debate, and reforms being side-lined, allowing problems to continue.
My experience of dealing with our local NHS trusts varies. The acute trust engages very well indeed and I have any number of formal and informal conversations with senior managers. They can be very frank and I value the responsive engagement. Mental health services do very well, but getting access to the service is problematic and that trust is less easy to deal with. The trust that looks after GPs and primary care is incredibly responsive and the management are brilliant.
But there is a fundamental problem. The NHS is terrified of blame.
When an aircraft crashes, the Air Accident Investigation Branch steps in to find out what happened. Frequently, pilot error is to blame, but that does not mean the pilot is help responsible. The reality is, by avoiding a blame culture, air safety has improved immeasurably. Accidents are treated as lessons to learn from, not lawsuits to blame someone.
Not so in the NHS. If something goes wrong, legal teams make sure the trust cannot be blamed. The result? No gets blamed, but no lessons are learnt on a daily basis. Only when a big tragedy is exposed, as with Ockenden, does the NHS start to learn.