Echo Comment on QCC report into Durham & Darlington NHS Trust

A national scandal is unfolding in breast cancer care, and there is a litany of regular bad news stories like last week’s A&E patient who waited 18 hours on a trolley. Now comes a Quality Care Commission report that downgrades the Darlington and Durham trust’s management from “good” to “requires improvement”.

That is damning, as is the phrase in the report that some people felt there was a culture of “turning a blind eye” to issues which enabled “pockets” of individuals with poor behaviour to remain.

There is no explanation about how our local services – the Memorial is the hospital that most people in Darlington and south Durham rely upon – were allowed to deteriorate in this way and who was responsible, although, as ever in the health service, we have a new management telling us that its new broom is sweeping clean and improvements are being made.

We accept that the chief executive, Steve Russell, only started at the end of September so he needs time to turn his oil tanker around.

But still there is no real way for local people to get answers about the progress. There are no councillors or commissioners to call to account, and the trust itself seems distant from town life.

So we have to appeal to our MPs to really get under the skin of the hospital and the trust, to find out what is going on and to reassure us that improvements are being made and that when our loved ones need care, they are getting the best the NHS can offer.