There have been a lot of stories lately regarding the damage to patients caused by hospitals trying to reach the Dept of Health pointy heads target policy.
I am sure you have all read the Mid Staffs horror stories, here is another “Trust” that is producing questionable target results Medical News Today “An NHS hospital has been employing staff on administrative tasks in order to artificially inflate performance against a key Government target, Pulse can reveal.
I am sure you have all read the Mid Staffs horror stories, here is another “Trust” that is producing questionable target results Medical News Today “An NHS hospital has been employing staff on administrative tasks in order to artificially inflate performance against a key Government target, Pulse can reveal.
Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has asked staff to manually upload paper referrals from GPs to boost performance against a Government target for e-booking and offering patient’s choice.
The activity means the hospital and the local primary care trust, NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, appear to be closing in on a Government target for use of Choose and Book - when in reality many referrals continue to come in on paper forms.
A report to the board of NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly admits: 'Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has been uploading paper referrals to the Choose and Book system to improve performance.”
This hospital is not “killing” patients because of the policy but it is encouraging the management of the hospital to produce inaccurate data that is used by the useless Monitor to “rate” the hospital.
The pointy heads brought in the target culture to enable us to establish whether we would want to be treated by hospitals based on the rating given.
It obviously isn’t working, I am not saying that all hospitals bolster the data to achieve targets but, it plants the seed of doubt in my mind that the rating system is not worth the web site it is written on.
It makes me feel that I can’t trust any of the ratings given by the useless Monitor and that the time has come for the demise of the “target culture” in our NHS.
“The constant dilemma of the information age is that our ability to gather a sea of data greatly exceeds the tools and techniques available to sort extract and apply the information we've collected.” Jeff Davidson
Angus
Angus Dei on all and sundry
NHS Behind the headlines
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