GOOD AFTERNOON and welcome to my weekly patient safety update. This week we look at the government’s response to the Select Committee report on the pandemic, news regarding the new Patient Safety Commissioner, more concern around sodium valproate, a call for evidence on maternity staffing and the recent increase in covid cases.

COVID REPORT RESPONSE At the end of last week the government published its response to the Select Committee report into the coronavirus pandemic. They accepted or partially accepted the majority of the 38 recommendations but did not meet the report’s call for additional social care funding or address the Committees’ concerns around infection prevention. Perhaps the biggest concern was the rejection of our recommendation that in pandemics SAGE should publish its advice to ministers to allow peer review by other scientists. We recognised that normally advice to ministers must remain confidential but this time, as we now know, early flaws in the advice and modelling would have been corrected much more quickly if other public health scientists had been able to review them. There was a curious attempt in the response to spin away some of the stronger conclusions by saying there were factual inaccuracies in the report - without saying where (apparently the public inquiry is the time to do that). Surely if something is factually wrong it should be corrected immediately? Overall I think our core judgement that terrible early failures to control the spread of the virus were combined with extraordinary success later with treatments/vaccines. We therefore ended up middle of the pack in terms of overall excess deaths - but could have been top without those early errors. Much to learn for the next one.

PATIENT SAFETY COMMISSIONER The government has announced that Dr Henrietta Hughes, the former NHS National Guardian, is their preferred candidate for the new position of Patient Safety Commissioner. I appointed her as our first National Freedom to Speak Up Guardian following the recommendations in the second Francis report to give better support to whistleblowers. I have to say I was always extremely impressed with her energy and understanding of the importance of culture - and the FTSU guardians have generally been very successful additions to the patient safety landscape. We all wish her well.

VALPROATE LATEST More troubling news about the impact of sodium valproate as Shaun Lintern reported over the weekend that it could be causing genetic changes that mean disabilities are passed on to second or third generations. The government really need to get a grip of this as the drug continues to be taken by pregnant women despite guidance saying it must no longer be used in any woman or girl able to have children unless she has a pregnancy prevention programme in place. Every single child born disabled as a result should be on the conscience of those in a position to stop this.

MATERNITY STAFFING CALL FOR EVIDENCE The APPGs on Baby Loss and Maternity have today launched a call for evidence as part of their campaign on maternity staffing. They want to hear about the actual impact short staffing is having on the care being given and what can be done quickly to address this. This consultation will run for six weeks so please do take a look and submit your thoughts. Why are we doing this? Because since the Select Committee report a year ago saying we needed 2000 more midwives (subsequently endorsed in the Ockenden Report) we are actually down 552 midwives.

WOMEN’S HEALTH AMBASSADOR Congratulations to Dame Lesley Regan who has been appointed England’s first Women’s Health Ambassador. Lesley ran RCOG when I was Health Sec and her commitment to patient safety was exceptional so I think this will be widely welcomed. Her appointment comes ahead of the Women’s Health Strategy which will be published shortly.

GP QUITTING WARNING More red flags on General Practice this morning with the Royal College of General Practitioners warning that 20,000 GPs are due to leave the profession in the next five years. This would obviously be a devastating blow to patients if it comes to pass and reminds us that retention is as important as recruitment. More continuity of care is one thing that would make a big difference to the job satisfaction of many GPs, a theme I will be returning to.

MODERNA CENTRE OPENING The government has announced that Moderna will open a vaccine research and manufacturing centre in the UK. This will give patients “access to next generation of mRNA vaccines and treatments” and also see a clinical trials base operate here. Good news and a real vote of confidence in the UK’s science base. It is also another step towards the commitment of G7 Health Ministers to speed up tests, treatments and vaccine development in any future pandemic.

COVID LATEST The ONS has reported a significant increase in the number of cases of the virus in England with 1 in 50 having it in the week ending 11th June compared to 1 in 70 in the previous week. The dashboard also shows that in the last 7 days cases have increased 32% and hospitalisations are up 33%. Deaths are still down thankfully. The BBC has an interesting article on how new strains BA.4 and BA.5 are causing this increase and this  interview with Professor John Edmonds on the Today Programme (0750 slot) is about the best summary I have heard of why we don’t need to panic (yet) but will have to learn to live with potentially 1% of the population having it at any one time. The number of patients in hospital with covid has ticked up again to over 5,000 but we’re still a long way from the higher levels of January and April of this year.

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Jeremy Hunt