Stafford hospital – the other story

By Diana Smith / @MulberryBush

There were two big political news stories yesterday. One was the report on the News of the World from the Press standards committee, raising a number of questions about the regulation of the press. The other was the inquiry report on Stafford Hospital. This was the story that gave David Cameron his PMQ soundbite of the week, demanding yet another inquiry (on top of the six so far) on the “400 unnecessary deaths”.

On the face of it these stories appear separate. In my mind they are closely connected.

I live in Stafford, where for the last year we have lived with repeated assaults by sections of the press.

When I waited for the publication of the Healthcare Commission report last year, I fully expected it to be a difficult experience. Clearly there were things that had gone wrong, and lessons needed to be learned about what needed to be done better at Stafford Hospital. What I could not have imagined in my worst nightmare was the Daily Mail headline which claimed that 400 people had died unnecessarily. By the next day this had increased to 1200.

This was a huge shock. It also quickly seemed to me to be wholly improbable. So I sat down and I read the report. I found nothing. The figures are not stated in the report, and they are not implied. What there is, in the body of the report was a revealing section which looked at how mortality data had been collected within the hospital, and why it was seriously flawed. The hospital had been under-recording co-morbidity, which factors in underlying conditions. Under-reporting has the effect of raising the Hospital Standardised Mortality Rate – or HSMR – figures, making it falsely appear that more people have died than they should have done.

More research showed the Daily Mail had manufactured an “excess death figure” by extrapolating it from the HSMR figures. This is wrong on two counts. It makes improper use of a figure which the Healthcare Commission Report established as wrong. I do not know who briefed the reporter, though I do have theories. I would suggest that this is a job for an investigative journalist.

By the time I had read the reports sufficiently carefully to be certain that the figures had no foundation, these false figures had become “common knowledge” right around the world.

I saw the distress that this was causing to so many people in Stafford and I was angry with the press and the BBC that this had been allowed to happen. When David Cameron came to Stafford, I naively believed he was coming to pour oil on troubled waters. I was very deeply distressed to find him using the story to make party political points. The highly inflammatory headlines which accompanied his visit did further harm.

This was the moment when in my mind David Cameron crossed the boundary. Clearly he had not read the reports. He had stepped into the “news of the world territory” linking himself with questionable but graphic stories that sell newspapers. This is scandal for votes.

There were more reports, the Alberti report is a study of what needed to be done to transform the hospital – much of which has now been put into effect. The David Colin-Thome report looks at monitoring systems. It was a relief to me to see in black and white that he actively contested the use that has been made of the HSMR figures. This assertion was clearly repeated at a public meeting with both the press and the pressure group present.

I expected the press to stop using the figures. But it simply did not happen.

Quietly, I began tackling the press. I talked to journalists who had not read the reports. I tackled the BBC on aggressive reporting. I wrote carefully worded letters to the press, and I talked for hours to the hundreds of constituents that raised the issue of the hospital on the doorstep.

Some of the reporting has moderated. But not all of it. All this time the hospital has been changing, making things better, trying to restore the shattered morale of the staff and the confidence of patients, a job made a little more difficult with every negative headline.

So yesterday the latest inquiry report was issued; there was PMQs and then there was the statement from Andy Burnham. On the subject of the numbers, the inquiry report is categorical. See volumn 1 section G. They are “unsafe” should not be used and the sensationalism has been damaging to all concerned. Presumably David Cameron’s advisor had not read this when he quoted the numbers on PMQs. He did, however, listen to Andy Burnham’s clear points on their unreliability during his statement. I hope David Cameron finds time to reflect on this. Andy Burnham has recognised the unreliability of the current HSMR system and is establishing an inquiry to create better mortality statistics system for the country.

In the course of the afternoon, the BBC sent a reporter to interview me, and I expect this to be shown on the politics show this weekend. I would hope that with the BBC at least we will now see an end to the use of these false and damaging figures.

Throughout this year I have found it deeply frustrating that there has been no effective way of combating the debilitating misreporting by the press. I recognise that the majority of journalists I am dealing with are decent people trying to do their job, but the culture of checking the facts is not there. This needs to be changed.

Since his visit to Stafford, when he so disappointed me, I have been watching David Cameron closely. This casual use of headline grabbing figures for party political gain is happening far too often. From the leader of the opposition I think we have the right to expect more.