Health Select Committee to quiz Robert Francis QC

Can you have good health outcomes with understaffed wards?

Health Select Committee member, Andrew George MP, said that he was looking forward to the opportunity to question the author of the report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry – Robert Francis QC.  Robert Francis who led the Inquiry will be a witness before the Health Select Committee in the House of Commons tomorrow morning between 9.30-11.30 am.

Mr George said, “Robert Francis has produced a comprehensive report containing thousands of pages of evidence and commentary.  However, many of the conclusions and recommendations are still at the very ‘conceptual’ stage.

“Fostering ‘a common culture shared by all’, developing ‘a set of fundamental standards’, providing ‘professionally endorsed and evidence-based means of compliance’ and ensuring ‘openness, transparency and candour’ are all unarguably good and worthy ideals but don’t amount to the firm action that is necessary in order to address the problems of poor health and care support in hospital.

“While the report clearly identifies the problem of understaffing on hospital wards, very little is said about what he suggests should be done about it.

“We need to get to the bottom of whether the problem is one of quality or quantity of registered nurses?”