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Bradford Teaching Hospitals fined for failure to comply with Duty of Candour
The Care Quality Commission has fined Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust £1,250 for failing to apologise to a family in a reasonable period of time.
CQC issued a fixed penalty notice to the trust because it had failed to comply with the Duty of Candour – the regulation that requires providers to be open and honest with patients or their families if there is an incident in which they suffer harm.
In this case a baby had been admitted to Bradford Royal Infirmary in July 2016, but there were delays in diagnosing his condition and missed opportunities to admit him to hospital. Although the trust recorded it as a notifiable safety incident, the family were not informed and did not receive an apology until October.
Professor Ted Baker, Chief Inspector of Hospitals, said:
"Under the Duty of Candour, all providers are required to be open with patients or their families when something goes wrong that appears to have caused significant harm.
“The action that we have taken against Bradford Teaching Hospitals does not relate to the care provided to this baby, but to the fact that the trust was slow to inform the family that there had been delays and missed opportunities in the treatment of their child. Patients or their families are entitled to the truth and to an apology as soon as practical after the incident – which didn’t happen in this case.”
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- Last updated:
- 17 January 2019
Notes to editors
Regulation 20 (3) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 requires a provider to provide a notification of notifiable safety incidents to the relevant person as soon as it is reasonably practicable to do so. It must:
- be given in person by one or more representatives
- provide an account, which to the best of the registered person's knowledge is true, of all the facts known about the incident as at the date of the notification,
- advise the relevant person what further enquiries into the incident the registered person believes are appropriate,
- include an apology, and
- be recorded in a written record which is kept securely
Further information on the Duty of Candour for providers and people who use services is available at: www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-providers/regulations-enforcement/regulation-20-duty-candour#guidance-links
Under the Health and Social Care Act 2008, CQC can serve a penalty notice when a registered person has failed to comply with certain requirements of the Act or regulations. In this case, CQC considered that a Fixed Penalty Notice was a proportionate alternative to prosecution.
Any fixed penalty paid to CQC under section 86 of the Act must be repaid by CQC to the Secretary of State. The legal requirements and associated fines are set out in www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/files/20150209_enforcement_policy_v1-1.pdf