A joint report by the Sunday Mirror and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism discovered two surgeons criticised over deaths at ‘Britain’s worst’hospital are still working there without patients knowing about their records.
A report in yesterday’s Sunday Mirror found that the pair are continuing to working at Stafford Hospital despite being part of a public inquiry into the deaths of 1,200 patients.
The inquiry was launched year after a Healthcare Commission report last year found ‘appalling standards’of care led to hundreds of deaths at the hospital.
The pair were heavily criticised in a report by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in 2009 but their names were blanked out.
Yesterday’s report in the Sunday Mirror said that ‘now, after an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism with the Sunday Mirror, we are naming them”.
The General Medical Council (GMC) confirmed both surgeons were being investigated but insisted it was safe for them to keep working”.
Shadow Health Secretary John Healey is quoted as saying
It’s wrong that details of serious concerns about these surgeons have been held back. New standards of open information are now needed, including a patient’s right to know about the track record of doctors set to operate on them
Last month, Press Gazette reported on GMC plans to hold negligence hearings behind closed doors, a move described as a ‘sad day for press freedom’and a ‘disaster’for patient care.
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