Posts tagged with Regulation

Dodders, late of the Worsted tendency, chugged on to the Today programme this morning. There was a hiss of steam as the old tank engine settled on its axles. The topic of the moment, aptly enough, was whistle blowing. Dodders and his Health Select Committee have been asked to look into the General Medical Council’s pernicious habit of feeding whistle blowers into the firebox, instead of listening to their concerns. Humph did his best to get up a head of steam. There were shunting noises as Humph and Dodders went back and forth over the rails. But they remained stuck in the sidings, puffing platitudes. Delivering professional obligations, puff. Professionals responsible to their regulator, puff. Much good work being done but still too many examples where standards aren’t being delivered, puff puff!

Twenty five years ago, the General Medical Council’s Annual Retention Fee for doctors to remain on the Medical Register was £20, and the “Blue Book” – the Council’s code of professional conduct for doctors – ran to some thirty pages. Today, the same fee is £410, and the code, which is now issued in several volumes, runs to hundreds of pages.

The Care Quality Commission have reported on Winterbourne View, the rogue hospital exposed in May by Panorama - so that’s alright then, isn’t it, only, of course, it isn’t. The CQC headline, ‘CQC report on Winterbourne View confirms its owners failed to protect people from abuse’ belongs to the ‘report confirms thugs are thugs’ category, and is, as many have observed, a clear case of doors being bolted after horses have fled. No wonder the CGC has been dubbed the ‘Can’t Quite Cope’ commission. The moniker – undoubtedly British Dentistry’s greatest contribution to National Lampoonery – says it all.

The CQC, speaking on R4’s You and Yours, took the oleaginous line, and added what will surely become known as the Cameron defence – ‘we have all been in this together’.