The senior judge who examined the activities of serial killer Dr Harold Shipman said there is “still a risk of a deliberate killing going unrecognised”.
Shipman murdered 250 patients and then signed their death certificates.
In 2003 Dame Janet Smith recommended establishing medical examiners to independently examine all deaths. They are to be done in England and Wales this year but there is no date set for Northern Ireland.
Dame Janet revealed that she did not believe patient killing such as the Shipman murders had occurred but did have concerns about cover-ups under the current death certification process in Northern Ireland.
Dame Janet said: “The deliberate killing of a patient is thankfully very rare.
“It is however a fact that the health service sometimes closes ranks in the face of criticism and is prepared to cover-up failings in the system and in the conduct of medical professionals.”
She added: “I don’t want to sound alarmist and I’m not saying there is another Shipman out there.
“But the medical examiner system was also designed to detect the cover-up of medical negligence, which I’m sorry to say is not uncommon, as a number of high-profile health inquiries have proved in recent years.”
In Northern Ireland, if a cause of death i unknown or is caused by violence or negligence it is usually referred to the coroner for further investigation. When someone is believed to have died of natural causes a doctor completes a certificate stating the cause of death. There is no independent verification that this cause of death is appropriate or correct in Northern Ireland.
The Hyponatraemia Inquiry report is the largest inquiry in Northern Ireland’s history and it examines the deaths of five children in Northern Ireland’s history. The Hyponatraemia Inquiry found there was cover-ups but no suggestion of deliberate medical wrongdoing, it found that some deaths were not referred to the coroner immediately to avoid scrutiny.
Commenting on the delay Dame Janet said: “From what I read in the newspapers there is no immediate prospect of the restoration of Stormont and Brexit continues to dominate political debate.
“To set up a truly independent medical examiner’s office you need funding and political will. Without the Stormont executive it’s going to be, I would have thought, impossible to set up in Northern Ireland.”
She added: “The Hyponatraemia Inquiry was yet another healthcare inquiry which found that families had been treated badly and concerns about their loved ones’ deaths had been rubbished.
“The pattern is always the same and without the safeguard of a medical examiner, I’m afraid to say, there is a risk of medical mistakes remaining undetected. Very little has changed since my recommendations from 2003.”
Shipman was a family GP working in Hyde, Manchester and killed many of his patients with a lethal injection of diamorphine between 1975 and 1998. 80 percent of his death toll were elderly women. He was found guilty of 15 specimen murders by a jury at Preston Crown Court on 31 January 2000 and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 31st January 2004, he hanged himself in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield in Yorkshire.
