Review of Gastroenterology Service: recent media coverage statement following coverage in the Telegraph newspaper

A story in today’s Telegraph newspaper alleges Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) tried to cover up criticisms made in a draft of a review by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) of our gastroenterology service in 2017.

These are serious allegations and ones which we strongly refute.

We would firstly like to offer reassurance to our patients and families that we always look to provide the very best care for them. Our focus is always on improving the way we work so we do the right thing by our patients

This is a really complex area of medicine with no agreed clinical guidelines and within this context, we have acknowledged we have not always got it right. In 2015, we recognised our gastroenterology service was not offering the best service to our patients, so we commissioned an independent review by the RCPCH to address this.

We are confident this review was comprehensive and thorough. It included assessments by independent national and international experts, and we worked really closely with our regulators the Care Quality Commission and NHS England and Improvement throughout the whole process.

In order to make sure we had fully addressed these learnings and to reassure ourselves that progress was being made to address the RCPCH’s original recommendations, we commissioned a follow-up external review and invited them to revisit the service in 2017.

As is standard practice, GOSH was asked to respond to a first draft of the RCPCH’s 2017 report to allow for fact-checking, improve clarity and make sure it accurately represented the service. It is very clear from records of GOSH’s dialogue with the RCPCH that the comments we made in response to the draft provided constructive input of this nature.

All our patients are now supported by a multi-disciplinary team, there is more psychological provision for inpatients and outpatients, and we have improved the ward environment. We have also reviewed all our gastroenterology patients and are assured that they are receiving appropriate treatment.

As part of the action plan arising from the review, and to continuously improve and evolve our service, we are considering a further expert clinical review of the service in due course. We understand how important it is to reflect on our position to continually ask what more we can do to improve the care we give our patients.

Should gastroenterology patients and their families have any further questions they can contact 020 7405 9200 extension 5984. They can leave a message with their child's details on it and a member of the clinical team will call them back within 48 hours.