Ministers have ordered an inquiry into evidence that an NHS trust failed to properly investigate 150 patient deaths and 17,000 incidents in which patient safety was put at risk.
The investigation is the latest in a series of inquiries into the care provided by Liverpool Community Health (LCH) NHS Trust. They all found serious problems including shoddy treatment, bullying and failures of leadership.
Stephen Hammond, the health minister, said on Thursday that Dr Bill Kirkup would lead a fresh independent inquiry into “substandard care” and the large numbers of “serious incidents” that took place between 2010 and 2014 in the Liverpool NHS trust.
LCH ran community-based health services, such as district nursing and care for diabetics, in Liverpool from 2010 to 2018. However, it generated controversy for much of that time and ceased to exist after its contract ended last year.
“We owe it to the patients and families affected by substandard care in Liverpool Community Health to establish the full extent of events and give them the answers they need,” said Hammond.
“The new investigation we have commissioned will review fresh evidence to make sure no stone is left unturned.”
Ministers ordered the inquiry after new evidence of failings by LCH were uncovered by Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust since it took over the contract in April 2018. A spokesman for Mersey Care said it had found a series of problem when looking into “a number of historical issues relating to case management incident reporting and record keeping”.
The spokesman added: “This initial review uncovered 43,000 incidents, of which 17,000 are patient safety-related, which we believe require further scrutiny because of poor and inconsistent record-keeping, data management and gaps in processes relating to human resources investigations.”
Kirkup, assisted by an expert panel, will first examine individual serious patient safety incidents that were not reported or adequately investigated by LCH and undertake a series of historic mortality reviews. Mersey Care said LCH did not properly look into about 150 patient deaths during the time it held the contract.
Kirkup will then look in detail at particular cases in order “to determine the scale of patient harm” and identify what lessons need to be learned, in both Liverpool and the wider NHS.
A previous review of LCH that Kirkup undertook last year was scathing about its many failings. Patients suffered “significant harm” because the “dysfunctional” trust provided poor care.
Cost-cutting by LCH – in a failed attempt to become an NHS foundation trust – was largely to blame, Kirkup found. The trust’s leadership team was “out of its depth”, he said.
The department of health and social care said on Thursday the advisers to Kirkup’s new review would apprise “where they believe senior leadership within the trust may have contributed to the delivery of unsafe patient care, identifying any themes, trends or issues hat may require further investigation”.
Several LCH bosses resigned in 2014 after a Care Quality Commission inquiry uncovered serious problems.
In 2016 an inquiry by the law firm Capsticks, commissioned by LCH, found its poor care was linked to an “oppressive” culture and that there had been “failings at multiple levels”. Among a long list of failings, the result of the inquiry highlighted the case of a man whose lung cancer was not diagnosed for four months.
