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Patients not numbers, people not statistics

On 27 August 2009, the Patients Association published a report which seeks to raise awareness of the type of failings in hospital care which the organisation is alerted to each week through phone calls to its helpline as well as emails and letters.

Of the cases highlighted, nearly all centre on concerns over basic nursing and domiciliary care.

As a consistent pattern of inferior standards of care has emerged, the report suggests that these accounts serve to emphasise unacceptable experiences facing patients throughout the country on a regular basis.

The report makes a number of recommendations, including calls for:

• the Care Quality Commission and/or the Department of Health to conduct a review of dignity standards in hospitals with a particular focus on basic nursing care for patients;
• the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman to review its processes for ensuring improvement following the upholding of a complaint to include rigorous follow up with clinical area visits to verify independently that positive changes have been made.

Patients not numbers, people not statistics (PDF)