Health board accused of ‘serious failings’ by information commissioner

Published on Wednesday 22 February 2012 15:43

SCOTLAND’S Information Commissioner has accused a health board of “perhaps the most serious catalogue of failings” for not handing over more than 50 reports on serious incidents at its hospitals.

Rab Wilson, who worked for Ayrshire and Arran NHS Board, asked it for copies of all “critical incident” reviews and significant “adverse event” reports.

The reports are used as a way of investigating incidents, improving safety and patient care and minimising risk.

Mr Wilson turned to Information Commissioner Kevin Dunion after the health board told him it did not hold any critical incident review plans, apart from one it had already given to him.

But when the commissioner investigated, 56 such plans were found on a computer drive.

The NHS board has now been ordered to provide Mr Wilson with a copy of the reports.

A report on the case said: “This decision involves perhaps the most serious catalogue of failings to search for and find information within the scope of a request that the commissioner has ever had to deal with.

“Claims were made to the applicant which turned out to be wrong. Prior assurances were given to the commissioner which turned out to be unjustified. Explanations for the failings were given in the course of this investigation which cannot be relied upon.”

It added: “At the very least, this constitutes a significant failure of records management. Given the nature of the information involving critical incidents and significant adverse events, which needs to be shared professionally for lessons to be learned and for the public to be reassured that action has been taken in response, the information failings may point to wider governance issues which have to be addressed.”

Mr Dunion told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland: “In the course of the investigation we discovered that over 50 action plans which we had been assured by the health board no longer existed, or were no longer held, were indeed held by them and had not been discovered despite supposedly exhaustive searches and assurances given to my investigators that they could not be found.”

Mr Dunion, who stands down as Scottish Information Commissioner tomorrow, said that when he persisted with his investigation the health board became “extremely irritated”.

He said there was a “degree of incompetence and ignorance” at the health board, “which is not at all satisfactory” but Mr Dunion said the case did not involve a “deliberate cover-up”.

But he added: “Nevertheless I still haven’t got any satisfactory explanation as to why so many reports could not be found by the health authority, despite their searches.”

The commissioner said some authorities needed to “wake up and realise that we’re now seven years into the FoI (freedom of information) regime in Scotland”.

He added: “This is my last-ever decision. I’m leaving office tomorrow. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved so far but clearly there are still instances where authorities haven’t recognised that things like records management and recovering information and making it available promptly when requested is what they are expected to do.”

Comments

There are 4 comments to this article

Order by:

• Newest first
• |
• Oldest first

Page 1 of 1

• 1
• Show all

4

Michael Ryan

Friday, February 24, 2012 at 11:36 AM

Hi Mark, You'll be able to get the correspondence plus documents under FoI from Public Health & Wellbeing Directorate. Rob Edwards, a name you'll have heard of, wrote about Alex Salmond's awareness in June 2008 as follows: "Last week Ryan wrote to the First Minister, Alex Salmond, calling for a moratorium on new incinerators in Scotland. “Incineration promoters claim that emissions pose no risk to health, yet they fail to provide any data to back up such an opinion,” he said." http:www.robedwards.com2008061000-new-waste-plants-planned-for-scotland.html If you map health parameters in electoral wards around incinerators, you'll see that wards exposed to high rates of emissions have high rates of: infant mortality; low birthweight; premature deaths from coronary heart disease, premature deaths from "all causes"; and also high rates of "Age Standardised Mortality Rates". It's simple stuff - if you are exposed to polluted air, your life will be more prone to chronic illness and you can expect a premature death. No-one in UK taking notice of research by people such as Professor Paul Mohai, Professor Frederica Perera, Dr Laura Fonken etc. http:www.telegraph.co.ukhealthhealthnews8617258Pollution-can-lead-to-brain-damage-and-depression-warn-scientists.html We need to map data as called for by Mark Isherwood AM: http:www.dailypost.co.uknewsnorth-wales-news20120130wrexham-wards-have-high-death-rates-figures-reveal-55578-30224181

• Report Unsuitable

3

Mark Bishop

Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 02:24 PM

Well done Michael, keep it up. Cover ups need to be exposed.

• Report Unsuitable

2

Michael Ryan

Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 12:36 PM

I suggest that Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon investigates the lack of due diligence by the Public Health & Wellbeing Directorate in respect of the incineratorhealth cover-up. The starting point was my detailed letter to Alex Salmond and my letter was acknowledged by Kirsti McGregor, of the Ministerial Correspondence Unit in her letter dated 1 July 2008, Ref: 20080026011. Covering up the truth on issues of health is endemic throughout the UK and is undermining politicians as well as the health of us all. The Health Protection Agency in London fobbed off Annette Stuart of the Health & Wellbeing Directorate by telling her that incinerators don't harm health. They "forgot" to tell her that they'd not checked any relevant data around any incinerators and they also forgot to apologise to Ms Stuart (or anyone else in the UK) in their "incinerator" press release of 24 January 2012: http:www.hpa.org.ukNewsCentreNationalPressReleases2012PressReleases120124Incineratorstudystatement Kind regards, Michael Ryan, Shrewsbury

• Report Unsuitable

1

Lachie Mhor

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 10:03 PM

Sounds like the usual Health Board cover up by unqualifed and inept people who are only out to save their posts and avoid litigation by the injured parties. I am surprised that there has not been a criminal prosecutionby the Lord Advocate. As the matter is no tconsidered to be a sectarian issue he will probably downgrade it to a Fiscals warning.

• Report Unsuitable

Order by:

• Newest first
• |
• Oldest first

Page 1 of 1

• 1
• Show all

Logged in as:

Comment here. Start typing your comment here:

Post comment

Please adhere to our Community guidelines

Your view

Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.