I absolutely do recognise that. One of my key priorities is to deal with the issues of GP recruitment and the GP contract, and to make general practice an attractive profession again. If we are to deal with prevention rather than cure, vulnerable older people in particular will need more continuity of care from their GPs, and we must help GPs to provide it.
None of those big ambitions will be achieved, however, if we do not get the culture right for the people who work in the NHS. One of the reasons that Mid Staffs—and, indeed, so many other hospitals—was in special measures was the legacy which, for too long, put targets ahead of patients. We should never forget that Mid Staffs was hitting its A&E targets for most of the time during which patients in the hospital were experiencing appalling care. In that context, Sir David Nicholson used the phrase “hitting the target and missing the point”.
Through the toughest inspection regime in the world, we are slowly changing the culture to one in which staff are listened to and patients are always put first. However,
although we identify hospitals that are in need of improvement much more quickly, we are still too slow in turning them around. I know that the new hospitals Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), will be looking closely at that, and I warmly welcome him to my team. Like me, he believes it is wrong that we have up to 1,000 avoidable deaths every month in the NHS, that twice a week we operate on the wrong part of someone’s body, that twice a week we leave foreign objects in people’s bodies, that almost once a week we put on the wrong prosthesis, and that people die because they are admitted on a Friday rather than a Wednesday.
We will leave no stone unturned in our quest to make a seven-day NHS the safest healthcare system in the world. Nye Bevan’s vision was not simply universal access or healthcare for all. The words that he used at this Dispatch Box nearly 70 years ago, in 1946, were “universalising the best”, which meant ensuring that the high standards of care that were available for some people in some hospitals were available to every patient in every hospital. Our NHS can be proud of going further and faster than anywhere in the world to universalise access, but we need to do much more if we are to complete Bevan’s vision and universalise quality as well. The safest, highest-quality care in the world, available seven days a week to each and every one of our citizens: that must be the defining mission of our NHS, and this Conservative Government will do what it takes to deliver it.
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