Responding to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) report on the way NHS trusts review and investigate the deaths of patients in England, Equality and Human Rights Commission Chief Executive Rebecca Hilsenrath said:
We are deeply concerned by the findings which show that the NHS urgently needs to improve how it identifies, investigates and learns from unexpected and avoidable deaths of patients in its care, particularly those with a mental health illness or a disability.
It is critical that the families of these patients are kept informed and involved in the investigations. This was an important finding from the inquiry we undertook last year into Adult Deaths in Detention.
