Watchdog warns of UK’s NHS ‘alarming’ culture

A health watchdog has warned about “an alarming culture” within the British National Health Service (NHS), calling for a radical reform to the country’s care system.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, David Prior, chairman of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) which is an independent regulator of all health and social care services in England, said the NHS risks going bankrupt without serious “transformational change” of the health service, including greater private-sector involvement and hospital mergers.

Prior also highlighted results of a survey of some 100,000 NHS staff, which found that one in four had complained about bullying, harassment or abuse from colleagues and managers.

“Too often it [the NHS] delights in the ritual humiliation of those deemed to fail, tolerates and institutionalizes outdated working practices and old-fashioned hierarchies, and can almost encourage ‘managers’ and ‘clinicians’ to occupy opposing camps,” he said.

Prior, who was appointed to run the CQC last year, also criticized the NHS for having a culture that “stigmatizes and ostracizes” whistleblowers.

Moreover, he warned that a “dysfunctional” rift between NHS managers and its clinical staff jeopardizes the safety of the most vulnerable patients.

TheTelegraph also disclosed on Saturday how almost half of NHS hospitals are facing a combined finance “black hole” of £330 million by the end of March.

The warning comes at a time when a series of scandals has shaken public trust in the UK’s health service over recent years.

In November last year, the CQC warned that NHS hospitals had failed to improve the quality of patients’ care in the three years since the 2009 Mid Staffordshire scandal.

The scandal at Stafford Hospital, a small district general hospital in Staffordshire, emerged in 2009, when it was revealed that between 400 to 1,200 patients died as a result of poor care from January 2005 to March 2009.