One of the long term mistakes has been the failure of policy to clearly develop, publish and use a failure regime for the nation’s hospitals. Whatever else we learn from Mid Staffs, we must recognise that a considerable number of local people felt that this hospital was failing them. Yet I am still not clear if, several years later, Mid Staffs is labelled a falling hospital or not.
That fact it has failed is clear. Whether anyone has had to nerve to categorise it in this way is less clear.
