Independent NHS complaint investigation and the curious case of recommendation 115

One quest is to get the NHS to offer an independent investigation into a complaint where appropriate.

Recommendation 115 of the Francis report and the Government response discusses when an independent investigation might be appropriate.

As part of the response it states that the Serious Incident Framework (last published March 2013) would be updated to reflect the Francis recommendations. It doesn't seem to have been. I may be missing something so I've written to the DoH as below.

                                                                                      1^st August 2008

 

DoH

By Email attachment

 

Dear Sir / Madam

 

In the government’s response to the Francis Report delivered on 26^th March 2014   recommendation 115, regarding complaint handling, stated that the working draft of the Serious Incident Framework published in March 2013 would be updated to reflect the recommendation as below

 

‘Depending on the nature of a complaint, fully independent investigation of the serious incident by an external team may be appropriate. However in some cases, particularly where it is not clear that a serious incident has occurred, it is appropriate, particularly in the initial phase, for an organisation to undertake its own investigation using staff sufficiently removed from the incident with no conflict of interest, until such a time as the facts require an independent investigation to be commissioned. The current NHS England Serious Incident Framework is a working draft and will therefore be updated and clarified in relation to this recommendation.’

 

The Serious Incident framework itself states that

 

‘This is a working draft. As the system learns and matures, changes will be made where appropriate, including in relation to any relevant actions that result from the recent report of the Mid-Staffordshire Public Inquiry’

 

Many complainants are still frustrated at the fact that no independent investigation is ever offered into their complaint and as such I would be grateful if you could answer the following.

 

1.      Has the Serious Incident Framework been updated as per recommendation 115?

 

2.      If not then what is the reason for this and when do you propose to update it to reflect recommendation 115?