Moving forward with Stafford Hospital.

For the Minister,, Tony Wright and David Kidney possibly the most important thing now is to rebuild the trust in Stafford Hospital and make sure that the best quality care is being delivered. 

We have come a long way since the publication of the Healthcare commission report in March.

The Alberti Report has conducted a full investigation of the A&E and other wards. Procedures have been overhauled and a number of improvements made.

An action plan has been agreed.

The Colin-Thome report has looked at the what needs to be done to make the monitoring structures more effective.

Board meetings are now being conducted in public. 

The Peter Garland report has looked at the position of the former Chief Executive.

All this has been done, but there are still many things which need to be worked through.

David Kidney in his speech identifies some of these.  

• • public inquiry into every aspect of what went wrong, why, and how it can be put right for the future. 
  • severe understaffing needs to be resolved.
  • The equipment that has been identified as missing needs to be provided.
  • retain a sense of balance. People going into that hospital had good experiences in some parts of it at some times, just as others had bad, sometimes appallingly bad or fatal experiences.
  • We need to impliment the Alberti report in full.
  • Rebuilding Staff morale is of major importance.
  • The Whisleblowing policy needs to be fully implemented. 
  • The public need to be consulted on the transformation plan.
  • Work should be done to identify the correct staffing levels for patients at different dependency levels. with the help of the Royal college of nursing.  
  • A lot more work needs to be done to improve staff morale and build the right levels of nursing experience, a skills mix, a settled staff, minimum sickness and absenteeism and less reliance on agency cover.
  • We need to ensure that the complaints procedures work well and in a way tha assists the hospital to learn continuously from experience. 
  • We need help to develop LINk to make it a fully effective body.
  • We need to be certain that the systems for monitoring the hospital are robust.