The NHS ombudsman has told a health trust chief to withdraw “not accurate” remarks about him amid an alleged attempt to play down up to 1,000 avoidable patient deaths.
Rob Behrens wrote to Stuart Richardson, the head of the Norfolk and Suffolk mental health NHS trust, over remarks he made about him to Norfolk county council’s health scrutiny committee.
The councillors on the committee were questioning Richardson over claims reported by the BBC’s Newsnight programme that his trust had “watered down” a report into what are thought to be the avoidable deaths of up to 1,000 patients.
The changes between different versions of the document toned down criticism of the trust’s leadership, a move that drew criticism from Behrens and bereaved relatives.
For example, the auditors, Grant Thornton, removed references included in the first version to the trust’s governance being “poor, … weak [and] inadequate”, after discussions with trust bosses. The trust and Grant Thornton said the changes were part of a normal factchecking process.
Referring to the changes, Behrens had told Newsnight that “the differences in the texts at key points are so huge that this is not just a bureaucratic drafting issue”.
Richardson told the committee that he had contacted the ombudsman to talk to him about his comments but had not heard back from him. The BBC reported Richardson’s assertion in an article on its website.
However, in a pointed letter to Richardson, Behrens has told him he was “surprised to hear of your remarks”, given that he had received no communication from him about the report.
Behrens, who has strongly criticised how some NHS trusts and bosses have responded to patient safety failures with a “cover-up culture”, has asked Richardson to retract his erroneous statement.
“I must ask you to notify the committee that your comment was not accurate and to seek a correction to the media report on the BBC website,” Behrens said in his letter.
Richardson announced last week that he was quitting and would leave the trust later this month. His replacement, Caroline Donovan, will be the trust’s sixth chief executive in six years. It has been embroiled in controversy for years over alleged poor care and high numbers of patient deaths.
The trust accepted that Richardson’s claim was inaccurate. A trust spokesperson said that he had made it “in good faith” and his mistake was due to “an administrative error”.
A trust spokesperson said: “Norfolk and Suffolk NHS foundation trust had drafted a letter to be sent to the ombudsman, in which we offered to meet to address his concerns around the process of factual accuracy checking for the independent Grant Thornton report.
“Due to an administrative error, however, the letter was not sent when we believed it had been. Our explanation to the Norfolk health overview and scrutiny committee was made in good faith and we have contacted them to apologise for the error and have also sought to correct the associated BBC online coverage.
“We have also apologised to the public services and health ombudsman for this error.”
