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Health boards urged to end ‘culture of secrecy’ around preventable death reviews

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Government ministers face a mounting backlash over secrecy as almost 1,000 preventable death and accident reviews a year in Scottish hospitals go unpublished, we can reveal.

Not a single health board is making redacted Significant Adverse Event Reviews (SAER) available to the public, despite guidance telling them to do so.

The Sunday Post was praised in parliament last week for revealing how 500 babies died and dozens of mothers lost their lives in maternity units over the past five years without officials being required to explain why.

MSPs expressed frustration that Scottish Government promises of greater transparency – made after two inquiries into maternity care a decade a go – have been ignored.

Now Scotland’s Information Commissioner is joining calls for an end to secrecy to make our NHS safer and ­prevent a recurrence of scandals like Dr Harold Shipman, Lucy Letby and our own NHS Tayside scandal involving rogue surgeon “Sam” Eljamel.

Official inquiries at NHS Ayrshire & Arran over six baby deaths, and at NHS Highland over five avoidable deaths, led to the Information Commissioner ruling SAERs should be redacted and made available on health board websites. A decade on, health officials refuse to make information available, hiding behind data laws.

Tory MSP Stephen Kerr is demanding answers from Public Health Minister Jenni Minto. He said: “It’s a matter of public interest, moral duty and democratic accountability that these reports are published, redacted where necessary, so the public can be assured that the NHS is learning from its most serious failures.

“The failure of ministers to act on this is no longer a neutral stance – it is complicity in the ongoing denial of accountability.”

Promises of transparency broken in veil of silence over mother and baby deaths in Scottish hospitals

Kerr lambasted Minto over her lacklustre response, demanding assurances that the current system is not being used to “obscure rather than illuminate critical failures in patient safety”. He said: “These are not statistics, these are human tragedies – avoidable ones.”

Scottish Labour deputy leader Dame Jackie Baillie said: “Learning from mistakes is the best way to improve patient safety, so this lack of transparency is deeply worrying.”

And Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “This looks like it could be a major scandal. We have seen from previous scandals that institutions can be reluctant to draw back the curtain and allow sunlight in. If they are unwilling to do this, ministers will have to turn up the pressure.”

Information Commissioner David Hamilton is urging more transparency where possible. He said: “Sharing of learning from significant adverse events that arise in our hospitals is a crucial part of preventing a reoccurrence. If learning can be shared publicly in a way that does not breach data protection or patient confidentiality it may be good practice to do so, to support scrutiny and accountability and build public trust.”

The commissioner said that while not every case may be suitable for publication, health agencies should consider change. He added: “We would expect to see the learning published where possible.

“Where information isn’t made public, people still have rights under Freedom of Information (FoI) law to ask for it, ­followed by a right to appeal to my office if they feel it has been unjustly withheld.”

Scottish Government Minister Jenni Minto. © Sandy McCook / DC Thomson
Scottish Government Minister Jenni Minto.

Health boards across Scotland refuse to issue figures on how many avoidable deaths or how many SAER reports there have been without FoI applications, which take months.

Louise Slorance, the widow of government official Andrew, 49, who died five years ago after contracting Covid-19 and the fungal infection aspergillus while receiving cancer treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow, said: “The continued deliberate culture of secrecy over patient deaths has become Scotland’s shame.

“I’ve had years of fighting to get to the truth over Andrew’s death despite promises of openness from former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, so what chance have other families got?”

The Scottish Government said: “We expect all boards to follow guidance to ensure robust and timely reviews are undertaken into such tragic events, to allow lessons to be learned at the earliest possible opportunity.”