NHS should not tolerate a single injury, says new senior adviser

Professor Don Berwick has said the NHS needs to become an organisation which does not tolerate single injury being caused unnecessarily.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph in his first interview since being appointed as a senior adviser to the health service, he stated that the NHS can become the safest care system in the world if changes are made.

The 66-year-old New Yorker, who until recently worked for Barack Obama as the US government's administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, argued: "The sky’s the limit."

He believes that events which occurred in Mid-Staffordshire, where over a thousand patients died because of substandard care, should provide the spur for major improvements throughout the NHS.

"Zero harm is morally and ethically the right way to go. Why should we tolerate a single injury?" he asked. "There is no reason why English health care cannot aspire to be and become the safest health care in the world."

His comments come in the same day in which the NHS Alliance said that some older people should avoid hospitals and be treated in their homes.

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