Reading: Francis who? Not a Standard Issue

Looking forward to finally catching up with some coverage on the long awaited and much anticipated Francis report, after a day of back to back meetings I grabbed an Evening Standard yesterday on my commute home from London to North Wales.

Ok, maybe the Evening Standard should not have been my first choice, but time was of the essence and it claims ‘capital coverage 24/7’.  There are loads of hospitals in London, and the DoH, and the headquarters of most of the thinktanks, patient groups and other influencers on how healthcare policy is going to be changed as a result.

On the top left hand side of page 8 I finally found it.

“A report today castigated doctors, nurses and NHS managers for one of the country’s worst health service scandals in which up to 1,200 died through lack of proper care…”  Joe Murphy’s drab c.400 word item was accompanied by a short piece on a sad story of parents who struggled to get attention for their deteriorating daughter at Queen’s Hospital in Romford last December.

It didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already read in advance on Twitter.  No comment.  No analysis.

So, what else I wonder is so important in the lives of the Evening Standard readers that they don’t need more about the report that was pitched as perhaps the most defining report in the history of the NHS?  What’s going on in London that beats the need for a radical change to the culture of healthcare delivery?

Here’s some of the items that got higher profile and/or more coverage in last night west end final:

• Front page Headline: Boris: my plan to build million homes
• Front page image: Rita Ora leaves Shepherd’s Bush Empire in an ultra-bright flowery dress
• Front page story 3: RBS fined £390m for rigging Libor rate
• Beckham’s new strip (full page 3 item on Beckham’s new 90 second underwear ad)
• Planning approval given for a new basement received in South Kensington
• The sale of a Picasso
• (This is where the Francis coverage was)
• Where Richard III should be buried (actually this has the most (and most repetitive) coverage of any item in the whole paper)
• Gay marriage
• Andrea Riseborough – Evening Standard Best Actress 2012 (full double page spread)
• A camel stolen in Mali
• Eliza Cummings – either because there was an image of her with very little on, or because she’s dating a Rothschild
• A ‘Modern Marvel’ property – “A story of gut instinct, nerve and flair” about transforming a drab little bungalow in Surry into a white, glassy, flat-topped modernist house.  “Wow” says Philippa Stockley.

Way to go Evening Standard – you’ve really mobilised the knowledge from this report for the capital audience – and the 3 out of every 4 people who were reading the Standard on that train.

For more useful reports try:

Dr Phil Hammond: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article3680378.ece

Health Foundation Resources Page: http://www.health.org.uk/areas-of-work/francis-inquiry/