Justin Madders – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Madders on 2016-02-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of whether common system failures contributed to the deaths of Sam Morrish in Devon in December 2010 and William Mead in Cornwall in December 2014; and what steps his Department is taking to address those failures.

Ben Gummer

The Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman’s report into the death of Sam Morrish, published in June 2014, made several recommendations for local National Health Service organisations involved in Sam Morrish’s care to implement. NHS England advises that these have now been implemented.

We are advised by NHS England that there has been ongoing dialogue with the Sam Morrish’s family, including their full involvement in development of an integrated care pathway for paediatric sepsis, which has been piloted in the South Devon and Torbay area and is currently being evaluated.

The (NHS England South) Regional Quality Surveillance Group is responsible for ensuring that all the national recommendations outlined in NHS England’s report on the death of William Mead, in December 2014, are implemented.

The Department will be keeping track of progress on this front.