BBC Online has a report today which throws in private hospitals with NHS hospitals as being part of a report which indicates standards of cleanliness are not good enough.
This is the opening of the BBC report:
Two-thirds of NHS and private hospitals are failing to meet the highest standards of cleanliness, snapshot inspections have revealed.
This makes it sound as though two thirds of private hospitals and two thirds of NHS hospitals are failing in this respect.
However going to Healthcare Commission website, the official press release summarises the findings as follows:
Dividing the hospitals into four bands, the Commission found:- High standards of cleanliness were being achieved in a significant proportion of organisations with 33 hospitals in band one.
- But too many hospitals failed to perform as well as they could with 44 being in band two, indicating they have room for improvement.
- There was evidence of systemic problems in the 23 hospitals that were in bands three and four, indicating that cleanliness was unsatisfactory for an environment in which clinical care is being provided.- Standards were markedly poorer in NHS mental health hospitals visited. These made up all six hospitals in band four, indicating serious and widespread problems, plus 18 of the 22 hospitals in bands three and four
So all of the hospitals in the worst category, without exception, were run by the NHS.
And what about the hospitals with the best results?
Simon Gillespie, Head of Operations at the Healthcare Commission, said
Among the highest scores were hospitals of all types.
In other words, despite being a small minority of the hospitals inspected, private hospitals were among those with the best results. And none of them had the worst results.
I have not seen the full report and perhaps there is some justification for the BBC's opening line there. But I very much doubt it. It looks very much as though some journalist at the BBC has twisted the report to say something that it does not say and which, moreover, is totally misleading and wrong.
It should be emphasised, in any case, that the hospitals inspected were not a random sample and were chosen with a view to finding both bad and good examples. This was not - and not inteneded to be - a scientific study.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias • NHS
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It's simply not good enough... Yet another example of either a biased-BBC or a very incompetent one. Has anyone else noticed the spelling/grammar on the BBC News site has worsened over the last few years?
They also have a tendency to refer to "jet crashes" even when the aircraft involved doesn't have a jet. This would suggest the incompetence theory over the prejudice theory... unless the BBC have it in for jet aircraft too? Mind you, that wouldn't surprise me either...
Posted by: Rory at December 15, 2005 02:33 PM
Not only is it twisting, it doesn't make allowance for the tendency of regulatory bodies to be harder on Private institutions.
This might be the same bias, alternatively it might be the expectation that state provision is rubbish.
Posted by: Paul at December 16, 2005 08:12 AM
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I'm sorry BBC, but there is absolutely no excuse here. “Two-thirds of NHS and private hospitals are failing to meet the highest standards of cleanliness, snapshot inspections have revealed” will clearly be interpreted as “two thirds of NHS hospitals and two thirds of private hospitals” by the average reader. As this is a subtitle, it appears on the bbc news front page and is thus all many people will read. Why not just use ‘hospitals’? Because this doesn’t mislead and achieve the aims of the editor in the same way.
Posted by: Alec Hodgson at December 15, 2005 11:03 AM