Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 01 December 2021
My thoughts and condolences are with all families who have lost a loved one while they were in the health service’s care.
Various claims have been levelled against NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and we have worked throughout to ensure that they have been investigated and, when necessary, acted on. When we consider individual claims, it is vital for specific consent to be given on an individual basis before comments are made. It would be totally inappropriate for me or any other member to discuss cases when such consent from the families who are involved was not explicit. Members may be aware of a letter from clinicians at the board who have stressed that point.
Serious claims have been made about Aspergillus in the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. That is why the health secretary has tasked Healthcare Improvement Scotland with undertaking a wider independent general review of Aspergillus in the QEUH to assess and determine whether there are broader concerns that require action. Any recommendations from that work will be implemented as quickly as is practicable.
As members will be aware, an independent review of the QEUH was commenced in March 2019 and was followed by the establishment of a statutory independent public inquiry, led by Lord Brodie QC, in September 2019. That public inquiry is now fully under way and I look forward to its conclusions and any recommendations being fully enacted.
Members will also be aware that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde was elevated to stage 4 of the NHS board performance escalation framework in November 2019. In order to provide independent scrutiny of the board, a QEUH oversight board was established at the same time, followed by a case note review in January 2020.
The investigations and reviews of recent years have led to a substantive programme of recommendations being implemented in the board and the hospital. That has meant that, of the actions for the board, 98 per cent of the independent review recommendations have been completed and 88 per cent of the oversight board’s recommendations have been completed—importantly, none of the small number of outstanding actions relates directly to patient safety. Further, 100 per cent of the actions in the case note review have been completed. An update on outstanding and continuing actions has been requested at the next meeting of the assurance group. We will work with the board to determine how progress against the recommendations can be shared more widely than current reporting mechanisms allow.
Scotland is the only country in the United Kingdom with a national reporting system for incidents and outbreaks. Funded by the Scottish Government, the evaluation of cost of nosocomial infection project team’s recent study identified Aspergillus as representing 0.68 per cent of all healthcare associated infection. Within Europe, it was estimated at the time of survey in 2016 that 6.5 per cent of patients who are treated in an acute care hospital have an HAI. In Scotland at that time, the overall point prevalence of HAI was 4.5 per cent of acute hospital patients.
In NHS Scotland more generally, the latest hospital standardised mortality ratio—HSMR—provides a measure of mortality adjusted to take account of some of the factors known to affect the underlying risk of death. The latest statistics show that QEUH is below the Scottish average for HSMR, as again has been observed in the letter from clinicians. [Interruption.]