Six baby deaths have been wrongly recorded as "stillbirths" by NHS hospitals, with one child having lived for five days, according to The Daily Telegraph. The incidents have triggered fears of potential medical error cover-ups.
"My answer is they're not supposed to engage in any manipulation of what we call international classification of diseases," said Dr. Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School. "And it appears as though they have been engaging in using a different classification compared to what is the truth. Then you have to ask the question: Why? And my answers would be as follows - I would be very worried and very concerned, and I would be very upset - if this is to avoid scrutiny, it is absolutely outrageous."
Pankhania explained that all neonatal deaths, even if it is a minute or an hour or a day, have to be investigated both by the coroner, but also by the maternity committee.
Meanwhile, parents of babies wrongly logged as "stillborn" could face financial implications, since they are not eligible for a "statutory bereavement award" – a type of compensation that is available to certain family members when their loved one dies – which amounts to £15,000 ($17,102).
"If this has become common practice, it shouldn't be," said Pankhania. "We need the classifier. We need the doctor who writes the certificate to be supported. We need them to be told that giving a false classification is also a wrong thing to do. Does this need a look back exercise to see if other trusts across the country are also using this same practice of reclassifying it as stillbirth, when it should be a neonatal death?"
The scholar emphasized the necessity of appointing "an independent scrutineer to do a look back and look at the say last year or last two years, stillbirth stroke, neonatal death and see whether they are truly stillbirth or where they are neonatal death."
"You could argue that if this has been highlighted in one trust, how do we know that other trusts are not also engaged in what I would say is malpractice," he noted.
At the same time, however, the horrendous incidents are yet another indicator of troubles brewing within the NHS, which is overwhelmed and understaffed, according to the academic.
"It is a very serious indicator that if the NHS is under stress and therefore you are getting neonatal death and therefore you are masking it as stillbirth, it is very serious and it could be a reflection of - services are under tremendous stress and then managers or others are circumventing scrutiny by classifying it as stillbirth so that it doesn't arouse enquiries and questions as to what went wrong. It could be an indicator of stress in the system. Without a doubt," Pankhania presumed.
This is not the first scandal involving the NHS: earlier this year, an independent investigation revealed that at least 201 babies and nine mothers had died as a result of maternity failings at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust.
In a July interview with Sputnik, Pankhania lamented the fact that the NHS in England is facing the biggest personnel shortages in its 74-year history, which could harm and affect the most vulnerable people in the community.
On July 25, the cross-party Health and Social Care Committee released a report indicating that the NHS in England is short 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, with hospital waiting lists reaching a record high of nearly 6.5 million in April. According to the study, "an extra 475,000 jobs will be needed in health and an extra 490,000 jobs in social care by the early part of the next decade."
Pankhania argued at the time that the NHS problems originated in decades of erroneous policies and experiments conducted by both Tory and Labour governments. He warned that the unfolding energy crisis and inflation could result in healthcare problems piling up across the nation. "What we need is a complete change of government in the United Kingdom," he told Sputnik back in July.