24.06.13
‘No decision’ to delete CQC report
CQC staff accused of suppressing a critical review into care at Furness General Hospital have denied they ordered the review to be deleted.
Grant Thornton analysis found that an internal review in 2011 was not made public, due to criticisms of the CQC. The hospital is now being investigated for the deaths of at least eight mothers and babies.
Consultants from Grant Thornton concluded: “We think that the information contained in the report was sufficiently important that the deliberate failure to provide it could properly be characterised as a ‘cover-up’”.
Former deputy chief executive of the CQC, Jill Finney told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “At that meeting we reviewed the report and the report concluded that the activity that CQC had undertaken at Morecambe Bay was satisfactory.
“It was quite clear on reading the report that it was not satisfactory and CQC should have done more. So at that meeting we agreed that the report required much further work. There was not a decision at that meeting to delete that report, nor was there an instruction.”
She added: “We made several representations to Grant Thornton about the accuracy of the way in which they were recording the information, and the way in which they were beginning to treat one allegation as fact.
“In spite of those representations, Grant Thornton did not reply, and did not change the way in which the allegations were presented.”
Media manager Anna Jefferson, also alleged as part of the cover-up, said she “would never have conspired to cover up anything which could have led to a better understanding of what went wrong in the regulation of this hospital” and CQC chief executive Cynthia Bower has said she “gave no instruction to delete” the internal review.
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