An Editorial in this week's Lancet looks at standards in National Health Service (NHS) Hospital Trusts in England, after reports that 4,600 excess deaths could have occurred across 25 trusts due to higher than expected mortality rates for particular procedures.
The Editorial highlights that, from April 1, 2010, all NHS trusts in England must register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the independent regulator of all health and adult social care in England, to legally treat patients. Trusts will be visited by inspectors at least once every 2 years under a new system to scrutinise standards, and the CQC will fine, prosecute, or close down trusts failing to meet benchmarks.
It concludes: "These measures are a vast improvement on the previous CQC regulatory system, which relied on hospitals completing self-assessments on standards and in which only about a fifth of all hospitals were inspected per year. For some trusts, registration under the new system is conditional on improvements being made in areas such as infection control and use of unregistered nursing agencies. Such improvements to independent oversight are welcome, but continuous monitoring and enforceable penalties are essential to bring all trusts up to the level to which the NHS aspires and the public expects."
For full Editorial, see: http://press.thelancet.com/editorials0304.pdf
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