Sir Bruce Keogh, former NHS England Medical Director, has developed a new information platform with the Independent Healthcare Providers Network. The database is designed to be a secure system to allow information to be shared between hospitals (private and NHS). It allows for healthcare providers to check clinicians against the database, which will flag any concerns about their work.
This framework has been put in place after the conviction of Ian Paterson, breast surgeon, who was jailed in 2017 after he was found to have carried out unnecessary surgery on a number of patients. Concerns about Paterson are understood to have been noted but not shared between the private and NHS practices in which he worked. There is an independent inquiry being carried out into the Ian Paterson scandal, the findings of which are expected later in 2019.
Sir Bruce Keogh is hoping the new database will make it harder for clinicians to ‘do the wrong things’. Using this framework, any concerns about clinicians’ practices will be shared with every location in which they work, making it harder for clinicians to operate without providers being fully aware of their activities.
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