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F278

Death certification

Mid Staffs Inquiry · Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry · Issued 6 February 2013 · Addressed to: Healthcare providers

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

It should be a routine part of an independent medical examiners's role to seek out and consider any serious untoward incidents or adverse incident reports relating to the deceased, to ensure that all circumstances are taken into account whether or not referred to in the medical records.

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

DHSC and NHS England stated in September 2024 that medical examiners had been introduced with statutory access to relevant records, operating under 2024 regulations requiring independent scrutiny of causes of death and the referral of care concerns to clinical governance processes, the coroner, or police (DHSC and NHS England, Feb 2026). Previously, the Thirlwall Inquiry legal team noted in May 2024 that primary legislation providing the statutory framework for the medical examiner system came into force in October 2023 (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.

About this summary
This recommendation applies across many organisations. The record above reflects central policy activity; adoption in individual organisations may vary.

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 Government intends to publish draft death certification regulations for medical examiners in England that will require that medical examiners obtain and consider information available about patient safety to inform their professional judgement as to the cause of death in a particular case.
The Royal College of Pathologists and e-Learning for Healthcare have produced an online learning module to help those involved in the certification of death. This will be updated as soon as possible to reflect these recommendations.

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

Medical examiners have now been introduced as set out in recommendation 45 The Access to Health Records Act 1990 gives medical examiners a specific statutory right of access to records of deceased patients that they consider relevant when carrying out their duties.

Regulation 6 of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death Regulations 2024 require medical examiners to provide independent scrutiny of the causes of death out a proportionate review of medical records, and making whatever enquiries appear to be necessary to confirm or establish the cause of death.

Should they detect concerns about care, medical examiners should refer such cases as appropriate to established clinical governance review processes and/or notify the coroner or police when appropriate.

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. 278, PDF page 572-573.

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

A number of the recommendations in Sir Robert’s Mid Staffordshire Inquiry report refer to our planned reform of the death certification system and the introduction of the role of medical examiner in England and Wales. A new system of medical examiners has been trialled successfully in a number of areas across the country. The work of the two flagship sites in Gloucestershire and Sheffield has been continued and extended to operate a medical examiner service on a city and countywide basis at a scale that will be required for implementation by local authorities when legislation is introduced. We will publish shortly a report from the interim National Medical Examiner setting out the lessons learned from the pilot sites.

The government remains totally committed to the principle of these reforms. Further progress will be informed by a reconsideration of the detail of the new system in the light of other positive developments on patient safety since 2010 and by a subsequent public consultation exercise.

The medical examiner e-learning module will be refreshed following any future consultation to ensure it reflects the relevant Francis recommendations.

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.

Site note: The Inquiry addressed this recommendation to healthcare providers, not to the Department of Health. The annex gives this update in the Department's publication and does not say who wrote it, so the row is the Department's report of the progress made on 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.

In April 2023, the Government announced it intended to introduce a statutory medical examiner system from April 2024. Primary legislation by way of amendment of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 to provide the framework for this came into force in October 2023.

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 does not colour its Extent of Implementation cell for this recommendation green; it leaves the cell uncoloured where a recommendation was rejected, where evidence of implementation was insufficient, or where steps had been taken but implementation was not yet complete. Table row: section 16.2 No. 278, PDF page 526.

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.