Fallout from Hinchingbrooke fiasco

Fallout from Hinchingbrooke fiasco

Of course it is not a valid conclusion from the failure of one hospital that privatization in the NHS is doomed to failure. The fawning over the experiment at Hinchingbrooke was always premature. Even now, the Daily Mail is resorting to conspiracy theories to explain the CQC report:

"at least one of the 35 inspectors is a member of campaign group Keep Our NHS Public and may have been unfairly critical."

Given the number of political appointees in the CQC, including a new chair who had previously Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party and a mentally ill incompetent saved from sacking by the personal intervention of Jeremy Hunt himself, it seems unlikely that the CQC would have a team opposed to the Conservative agenda of privatizing the NHS. The Daily Mail seldom acknowledges mistakes however; it has never accepted it was wrong about MMR, for example.

Cure the NHS, the lobbying group started with the help of funding from Bill Cash Conservative MP, has been curiously quiet. We are told that they receive complaints from all over the country about poor care. It seems odd that Hinchingbrooke Hospital would be the exception. Either CTNHS are not in touch with the state of the NHS after all, or they have been covering up the inadequacies of Hinchingbrooke Hospital. They would only have to read the newspapers after all to find a case quite similar to that of Gillian Astbury.

How long will it be before Cure the NHS comment? After all, Julie Bailey gave this ringing endorsement of Hinchingbrooke Hospital, also in the Mail:
"What this shows is the potential of allowing those on the frontline to lead, as Circle do.
The potential is there within the NHS – the majority of people wouldn’t care who provides their services as long as it was safe."
Will they call for a public inquiry into care that seems to be at least as poor as that in Mid Staffs? All the criteria that were used to justify calls for a statutory public inquiry into Mid Staffs are also fulfilled for Hinchingbrooke Hospital. So those who called for a public inquiry into Mid Staffs that don't call for the same for Hinchingbrooke are guilty of rank hypocrisy.