EVERYONE in East Lancashire has an interest in how our hospitals are performing.

We rely on Royal Blackburn and Burnley General for our health and ultimately for our lives.

That’s why shockwaves reverberated around the area when the government named East Lancashire Hospitals Trust as one of 14 nationwide with worryingly high mortality rates.

Now NHS boss Sir Bruce Keogh has published his long-awaited reported and 11 of the Trusts, including ours, have been put into ‘special measures.’ In East Lancashire the report expresses concern at high readmission rates of already-treated patients, the management of ‘high patient levels’ in A&E, low staff levels, and communication failures between managers and the board.

The complaints process is dubbed ‘poor and lacking a compassionate approach.’ We know many skilled and dedicated frontline staff do a lot of fantastic work at both hospitals and it would be wrong to suggest that the report’s comments should cast a shadow over their efforts. But these criticisms are pretty shocking. They aren’t things that have arisen overnight and we need to see a massive improvement in some areas.

Today we are told two senior figures have left, albeit ‘for personal reasons,’ but the feeling persists that there are other managers who should have been held to account over the past few years. Rather depressingly they seem to escaped.

A follow-up ‘risk summit’ is to be held in September to check up on how much progress has been made in putting things right.

We need to be kept informed about what is being done to improve standards.

We, the public, also need to be reassured about the future and transparency from health bosses is essential.