Given that the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre serves better than half the population, with an international reputation as a teaching centre to match, the idea that there could ever be an “unacceptable risk” to its quality of care is obviously disturbing.
No doubt recommendations from Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) to resolve this situation will now be followed to the letter. No doubt there will be no repetition of the failures that led 86 members of staff to write to the Health Secretary, Shona Robinson, complaining that acutely-ill patients faced potentially serious risks.
If those are the results, both whistle-blowing and an HIS investigation will have proved their worth. What will remain to be established is why the reorganisation of acute services in Glasgow – the ostensible reason for the controversy – was ever allowed to cause such a situation.
By all accounts, relations between oncologists and management suffered a “serious and detrimental breakdown”. Why? And what excuse is there for “deep mistrust, poor communications and an adversarial relationship” at any time within a centre whose paramount responsibility is to patients?
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has been told to take urgent action to rebuild relationships between staff and management and ensure that a “safe and sustainable” care model is put in place. Well and good. Nevertheless, it is damning that such instructions should ever have been required. It should never have come to this.
At bottom, there are issues over high-dependency care services and round-the-clock anaesthesiology. Professors, consultants, oncology trainees and junior doctors were sufficiently concerned to warn that care was being put at risk. In large part, they have been vindicated. Clearly, what the HIS report calls “current arrangements” are not good enough.
No doubt both sides will take a view on such a judgment. Ill-feeling between staff and management will not aid the necessary changes. For the sake of all concerned, nevertheless, past animosities must be set aside. The centre’s reputation is at stake. More importantly, the care of very sick people depends on speedy action to resolve the Beatson’s problems.
The redesign of Glasgow’s acute services has been no small task. We hear, indeed, that it has been the most complex experienced by any European health service. Its handling will need to be far better in the future than it has been in the past.
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