This Sceptered Isle, Part LXVI

There's been another distressing report from the Telegraph of London regarding hospital trust mismanagement within UK’s National Health System.

As if the news is not bad enough on its face, scroll down to the 13th paragraph to read this:

“Ratings given to hospitals rely on their own assessment of their performance.”

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Well, management malfeasance, for one: “At Basildon Hospital, managers gave themselves 13 out of a 14 possible marks for safety and cleanliness. The ratings were published just weeks before the damning inspection report was drawn up.”

Previous reports of problems at Basildon are linked here and here.

However, it is clear that Basildon is not some isolated, one-off failure in a sound system.

The linked articles also report that disclosures such as these are harming the public trust in NHS. Gee, ya think?

These are not simply management failures, but are governance failures within the NHS model. They show NHS is seriously at risk to incompetence, indifference, and lack of public accountability that are so prevalent in government bureaucracies.