Probe ordered into hospital deaths

A full public inquiry is to be held into failings at an NHS hospital that are believed to have cost hundreds of lives.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the standards of care at Stafford Hospital had been "appalling".

He told MPs: "I remember going to Stafford and meeting with the families, many of which had lost loved ones, some of whom went into hospital for a routine operation but because the standards of hygiene were not right, because the management was not right, and because frankly targets were being pursued rather than clinical outcomes, people died needlessly."

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He insisted a public inquiry was important so the people of Stafford could "tell their story".

The previous Labour government rejected calls for a full public inquiry into events at Stafford Hospital, instead ordering an independent inquiry.

That inquiry, which published its findings in February, found that the hospital "routinely neglected" patients and displayed "systemic failings" in care.

The independent report, chaired by Robert Francis QC, also found the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust lost sight of its responsibility to provide safe care after managers became preoccupied with cost-cutting and Government targets.

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The previous inquiry was launched after a Healthcare Commission report published last year revealed a catalogue of failings at the trust, which also runs Cannock Chase Hospital.

Appalling standards put patients at risk and between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected betweeen 2005 to 2008.

Giving more details of the move, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said the new inquiry would be chaired by Mr Francis and deliver its conclusions by next March.

He said evidence would be held in public in order to "combat a culture of secrecy and restore public confidence".

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Mr Lansley criticised the former government for not putting the process in place before.

"We know only too well what happened at Mid Staffordshire, in all its harrowing detail, and the failings of the trust itself," he said. "But, we are still little closer to understanding how it was allowed to happen by the wider system.

"The families of those patients who suffered so dreadfully deserve to know. And so too does every NHS patient in this country."

He went on: "When this inquiry has completed its work and I return to this House to present its report, I am confident that we will, for the first time in this tragic saga, be able to discuss conclusions, rather than questions.

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"We will be able to show that we have finally faced up to the uncomfortable truths of this terrible episode, and we will be able to show that we are taking every step to ensure that it is never allowed to happen again."

Mr Lansley also indicated that a key NHS target for patients visiting accident and emergency units to be treated within four hours would be scrapped.

Mr Lansley told MPs he would "abolish" the four-hour target – but backtracked when faced with anger from Labour frontbenchers, instead saying he would "amend the A&E target alongside others".

The Government has pledged to scrap NHS targets that have "no clinical justification" but has not yet revealed details.

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He told MPs: "What happened at Stafford was evidence, and we had other evidence in many other places, that the four-hour target was being pursued not in order to give the best possible care to patients – but in spite of what would be the best possible care for patients.

"Patients were being discharged when they shouldn't have been, they were being transferred onto inappropriate wards where there was not provision to look after them. It is vital that we focus on the results and the outcomes of patients."