The NHS needs a seismic shift to prevent serious harm and even death, warned the Patient Safety Commissioner Henrietta Hughes when she launched her 100 Days Report – an event attended by Sling The Mesh.

The culture within the health service focuses on productivity, operational performance and financial control instead of patients – and it is getting worse.

“Unless leaders set a strategic intention to listen to patients and act, we are heading straight back to the days of Mid Staffs and other health scandals, severe harm, and death,“ said Dr Hughes, who called for change to improve the safety of medicines and medical devices.

Sling The Mesh attended and expressed our concerns to Dr Hughes about the failings of the so-called specialist mesh complication centres – including how the NHS has worked with just four women in the commissioning of the service and two of those don’t even have mesh – as well as a lack of meaningful data around mesh removal outcomes.

Cultural change

In the 100 Days Report, Dr Hughes calls for a cultural change throughout the health system and announces her plans.

She said the issues set out by the 2020 independent review of medicines and medical devices, which led to her appointment, were continuing and patients’ concerns were still being ignored in a disjointed system.

Patients suffering pain and disability because of pelvic mesh were still not being heard and were not being referred in a timely fashion to specialist pelvic mesh centres, she said.

Dr Hughes added: “This is not because of inaction, it is because health leaders don’t understand the health system, don’t own the problem, and don’t work effectively together, leaving patients to pick up the pieces.

“I have discovered that we need a seismic shift in the way that patients’ and families’ voices are heard. This requires changes in legislation, regulation, policy, commissioning, education, professionalism, attitudes, behaviours and culture. In essence, everything we do as a healthcare system because everything we do is about patients.”

‘Moment to set new course’

Dr Hughes called on health leaders to introduce patient voices into their governance.

She said: “I want us to be able to look back in astonishment on the way that we operate now. This is the moment to set a new course with shared decision-making and patient partnership as our destination.

“Without listening and acting on patient voices, safety continues to be compromised, and patients and families continue to suffer the consequences of harm.”

• For copies of Dr Hughes’ speech, email commissioner@patientsafetycommissioner.org.uk