The series of scandals hitting the NHS seem non-stop, says David Philpott, but its links with civil society could help stem the tide.

So another week has come and gone with more shocking stories about our supposedly failing National Health Service. Now, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has determined that a quarter of our hospitals are at high risk or with higher than expected death rates. A couple of weeks ago this same Care Quality Commission were castigated by the West Sussex Coroner Penny Schofield for giving a "good" rating to Orchid View Care Home which it turns out was culpable through neglect in the deaths of five elderly residents.  

So has the NHS - a care system once said by some to be 'the envy of the world' - now become a system in catatonic breakdown? Has it by default become the object lesson used by the gainsayers of Obamacare across the pond? 'Look at what happens when you have a socialised health system (read Communism)!' must surely declaim those medical free marketeers.

A senior NHS manager once suggested to me that when as a nation we abolished fox hunting, the press and the public needed something else to kick. In his opinion, the NHS was the most convenient punch bag; the fact that he was mixing his metaphors didn't occur to him. Whether that assessment is true or not it does not mitigate against the wave after wave of health scandals we have witnessed in recent times. Until Robert Francis QC reported on the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust earlier this year, the National Health Service still occupied a position of near corporate deity in the national psyche. However, the times they are a changing......

If being Secretary of State for Health is a poison chalice, the role does offer the incumbent at least one unique advantage over his Cabinet colleagues. What other government minister can boast for example that his department is supported and assisted by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of volunteers and a multi million pound enhancement of the public purse through voluntary contributions?

I am talking of course about both the obvious and the visible such as MacMillan Cancer Care or your local hospice and the less visible like the countless Community First Responders who in remote villages across the nation provide CPR and defibrillation before the NHS ambulance paramedics arrive. The list of such charitably-funded services that enhance and support the system is breathtaking, ranging as it does from substance misuse diagnosis and recovery treatments to mental health services, groundbreaking research around rare medical conditions to bereavement support following neonatal death.

In the furore last week around the 44 hospitals out of 161 that posed a risk to patients, the Care Quality Commission also reported on the Medway NHS Foundation Trust in Kent with regards it's "Regulated Activity for Maternity and Midwifery at the Trust". The story however may have slipped below the national radar. The Trust was found wanting in six areas and in three, Enforcement Notices have been served.

As chairman of a charity called Abigail's Footsteps which provides (among other things) training and support for families and midwives when stillbirth occurs, I welcome the CQC Report. It focuses in well on what the priorities of the Trust need to be and as a charity we will do our part to help fix the problem by offering the training and upskilling (including bereavement counselling) that these overworked and hard-pressed midwives require. I am optimistic that as hospitals collaborate with stillbirth charities such as ours, the voluntary sector will be given the same kind of blessing by hospital managers as has been given in the past to palliative care services or community response initiatives.

Now I couldn't imagine that happening in the USA with or without Obamacare.

This blog was amended on 28 October.