Proposals to impose a legally binding "duty of candour" on healthcare providers
The Department of Health is now actively considering imposing a legally binding "duty of candour" on hospitals, surgeries and other healthcare providers, ensuring NHS managers and staff admit to patients when a medical error has led to harm as well as explain exactly what went wrong and apologise.
The Chief Medical Office Sir Liam Donaldson supports a statutory duty of candour, as do the Commons health select committee and patient groups. Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS's medical director, is understood to agree.
The health minister, Ann Keen, has told the campaign group Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA), which is working for the change, that it will get "full consideration" and has suggested the plan could be realised in 2011. Writing to the group's chief executive, Peter Walsh, she said: "I agree that a culture of openness and transparency is vital when things go wrong in the provision of care." But the registration regulations for health service providers, which the NHS watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), proposed to be in place in April 2010, were receiving final legal clearance before going to parliament, and that meant that changes could not be introduced "at this advanced stage".
However, opposition MPs could try to force ministers to make the change from 2010, when the rules are debated next month.
Commenting on the news, expert medical negligence lawyer Adrian Desmond said: 'Admitting medical mistakes openly and quickly when things go wrong is the only thing to do ethically, morally and professionally. A legal duty of informing patients and next of kin should be imposed and would encourage better patient safety in the short and long term - and would secure prompt justice when patients have been harmed. At Boyes Turner we have actively supported the excellent AvMA campaign on this issue and continue to do so."
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