Reacting to health secretary of state Jeremy Hunt’s speech to the Nuffield Trust today, (8 March), Sir Richard Thompson, president of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) said:
The secretary of state is right to highlight that there is variation in the standards of hospital care across the NHS. All involved in healthcare must continuously strive to increase standards to their highest possible level for all patients. For the NHS to achieve universal excellence, delivery of care must be a shared responsibility between healthcare professionals, managers and others working across the system.
The Royal College of Physicians exists to drive up standards across health care in the UK. The RCP is committed to continuing our leadership role in ensuring doctors take responsibility for holistic care, not just diagnosis and treatment. We must work to ensure that patient experience becomes as an important measure of quality as clinical outcomes.
However, I believe the secretary of state is wrong to imply that hospital staff are prepared to accept mediocrity; this is not my experience. Most trusts are struggling to cope with an impossible burden of a relentlessly increasing workload coupled with financial restrictions. The RCP have highlighted the systemic problems in the NHS in our September 2012 report Hospitals on the edge? which calls for all health professionals to promote patient-centred care and to treat all patients with dignity at all times. The RCP’s Future Hospital Commission, due to report in June 2013, is reviewing the standards and processes for care of patients in hospital and will outline how parts of the system must change to better meet all patients’ needs by placing them at the centre of all we do.
This work is underpinned by playing a leading role in accrediting healthcare services and auditing clinical and organisational practices and outcomes. This process empowers health professionals to drive real service improvements across the system. We believe the development of this has a strong role to play in the widespread improvement of patient outcomes.
The RCP is working on new models that put patients at the heart of everything we do. Professor Tim Evans, RCP’s lead fellow for the future hospital, spoke yesterday at the Nuffield Trust summit. Professor Evans highlighted the need for strengthened medical professionalism to sit alongside radical change in the way services are structured, saying:
Senior doctors have to be accountable for coordinating and assuring patients’ care, beyond specialties. There are good hospitals out there, the difference is the leadership and teams they put in place.
For further information, please contact Hannah Bristow, Clinical Standards communications officer, on +44 (0)20 3075 1447 / 07584 303 784 or email Hannah.Bristow@rcplondon.ac.uk