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F270

Improving and assuring accuracy

Mid Staffs Inquiry · Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry · Issued 6 February 2013 · Addressed to: Department of Health and Social Care

Government responseDepartment of Health and Social Care: Accepted (Nov 2013)

DeliveryDHSC and NHS England say in progress (Feb 2026)Department of Health and Social Care says in progress (Feb 2015)

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

There is a need for a review by the Department of Health, the Information Centre and the UK Statistics Authority of the patient outcome statistics, including hospital mortality and other outcome indicators. In particular, there could be benefit from consideration of the extent to which these statistics can be published in a form more readily useable by the public.

Mid Staffs Inquiry, Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry · 6 Feb 2013 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

In commentary from September 2024 published in February 2026, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England stated that patient outcome statistics are publicly available through various platforms, including its website, public portals, and Care Quality Commission inspection reports (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). Previously, in May 2024, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team found that the UK Statistics Authority had reviewed patient outcome statistics in February 2014, leading the Secretary of State for Health to commission independent assessments for seven sets of statistics (The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team, May 2024).

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

Report-level response context

Government responded via "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (2014), a single document covering all 290 recommendations with a blanket acceptance. Individual recommendation responses were not broken out.

Government response

●Department of Health and Social Care · Accepted · 19 Nov 2013

Speaker not recorded. Source: Department of Health, Hard Truths: the Journey to Putting Patients First, volume 2 (Cm 8777-II), November 2013

Accepted.
The UK Statistics Authority is undertaking an independent review of patient outcome statistics recognised as official statistics. The review, among other things, is considering how to make such statistics more readily useable by the public. In undertaking the review the UK Statistics Authority has had discussions with the Health and Social Care Information Centre, NHS England, Department of Health, Care Quality Commission and the Office for National Statistics. The report will be published later in 2013 and we will study its findings closely with a view to help improve presentation of statistics to patients and the public.

Extract from: Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First. Volume Two of the Government Response to the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry: Response to the Inquiry's Recommendations

Site note: This is volume two of "Hard Truths: The Journey to Putting Patients First" (Cm 8777-II), the government's response to the Inquiry's 290 recommendations, published by the Department of Health on GOV.UK on 19 November 2013 and dated to that day here. The PDF the row links to is the accessible edition, whose title page reads "January 2014". The Department of Health has been the Department of Health and Social Care since January 2018. The volume says it includes accounts from each of the national organisations the recommendations name, but it does not mark which passage each organisation wrote, so every row is filed under the Department that published it.

Delivery

●DHSC and NHS England say in progress · 27 Feb 2026

Patient outcome statistics are publicly available through various platforms, including NHS England’s website, the CQC’s inspection reports and NHS England’s public portals.

From: The Thirlwall Inquiry: Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version dated April 2025)

Site note: DHSC and NHS England's own account of progress, supplied to the Thirlwall Inquiry in September 2024 and printed in the Inquiry legal team's Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version dated April 2025, published 27 February 2026). It is not a finding of the Inquiry. Their reviewed extent of implementation reads “Implemented - Ongoing”. Table row: section 18.2 No. 270, PDF page 569.

●Department of Health and Social Care says in progress · 11 Feb 2015

The UK Statistics Authority published its review Official Statistics on Patient Outcomes in England in February 2014. This was accompanied by a letter to the Secretary of State for Health, which invited him to put forward seven sets of patient outcome statistics for independent the UK Statistics Authority assessment. The letter also proposed further recommendations for the statistics producers - namely the Health and Social Care Information Centre, NHS England, and the Care Quality Commission - to improve the usability of their statistics. The Secretary of State for Health formally requested the proposed assessments, and noted that the statistics producer bodies would consider the other recommendations. Assessments for five of the seven sets of statistics have already begun, including the Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator, with the other two scheduled to begin in 2015. This is intended to provide independent assurance that these important statistics comply with best practice. The statistics producers are working together to understand the views of service users and the public on how the publication of these statistics can be made more accessible, clear and at a level of detail that supports their use.

From: Culture Change in the NHS supporting Annex (annex to Culture change in the NHS: applying the lessons of the Francis Inquiries)

Site note: This is the supporting annex published on 11 February 2015 with "Culture change in the NHS: applying the lessons of the Francis Inquiries" (Cm 9009), attached to the GOV.UK page as "Culture change in the NHS supporting annex". The annex has no title page; that title is GOV.UK's and the PDF's own. Its table has four columns (No., Recommendation, Hard Truths Government response, Progress update), and the row carries the Progress update cell. No column says which organisation wrote an update, so the row is filed under the Department of Health (now the Department of Health and Social Care), which published it.

What other bodies have found

In their own words. These do not change the delivery statement above.

●Thirlwall Inquiry legal team · 15 May 2024

This recommendation was accepted by the Government.

The UK Statistics Authority undertook a review of patient outcome statistics recognised as official statistics, which was published in February 2014. The Secretary of State for Health then commissioned a further 7 sets of patient outcome statistics for independent UK Statistics Authority assessment, including Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator, which began in 2014.

From: The Thirlwall Inquiry: Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version of 15 May 2024)

Site note: The Thirlwall Inquiry legal team's own notes on implementation, from its Review of Implementation of Recommendations from Previous Inquiries into Healthcare Issues (version of 15 May 2024). The review colours its Extent of Implementation cell for this recommendation green, which it uses to mark evidence, identified by the legal team, that a recommendation has been clearly implemented. Table row: section 16.2 No. 270, PDF page 523.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.