The use and impact of inquiries in the NHS

When things go wrong in the NHS an inquiry is often set up to find how what happened and what can be learnt. Kieran Walshe and Joan Higgins show that since the 1970s inquiries have been resorted to increasingly often to investigate service failures. Such inquiries take various forms, but the pressures seem to be increasing for them to be set up as independent external investigations with full inquisitorial powers.