A few weeks ago Alan Milburn outlined how he saw that one of the main outcomes from the Francis Inquiry into events at Mid-Staffs should be much much greater transparency of information about the NHS for the public outside. In 2013 very few people would disagree with that. But there will be important disagreements about what this means.
Last week Liz Kendall from Labour’s Shadow Health team spoke to a National Voices’ conference about how she felt we needed to extend transparency. One of the points she made was that the public didn’t just need more numbers about what is going on inside the NHS, but that the NHS needs a form of knowledge about what is going on inside that has been partly created by patients and the general public outside.
