The regulatory system at Stafford Hospital was "wholly ineffective", a public inquiry heard.
Lawyers for Cure the NHS, a campaigning group made up of relatives whose family members died at the hospital, said the health system "completely failed".
The hearing is the fifth into the hundreds of higher than expected deaths at the hospital between 2005 and 2008.
Earlier inquiries into a 2009 report which condemned conditions at the hospital were heard in private.
The new coalition government ordered that an inquiry be held in public.
A Healthcare Commission report, issued in 2009, listed a catalogue of failings including receptionists assessing patients arriving at A&E, a shortage of nurses and senior doctors and pressure on staff to meet targets.
Jeremy Hyam, counsel for Cure the NHS, said: "The stark and worrying concern is that the regulatory system supposedly in place was wholly ineffective to prevent a dramatic lowering of standards not just for a matter of months, but for at least four years."
The inquiry is the culmination of more than three years of campaigning by members of Cure to expose the failings at Stafford Hospital"
End QuoteJeremy HyamCounsel for Cure the NHS
He asked how the hospital had managed to get Foundation Trust status, at a time when the care being given to patients was so poor it was capable of amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment under the European Convention on Human Rights.
"The inquiry is the culmination of more than three years of campaigning by members of Cure to expose the failings at Stafford Hospital," Mr Hyam said.
It was not just patient care which was failing but also the failure of the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust, and its supervisory bodies to prioritise patient safety over targets, he added.
Concluding his opening speech he said the inquiry was a chance to look at the regulation system within the NHS.
"The shocking experience of Mid Staffordshire suggests that despite the array of supervisory, regulatory and commissioning bodies within the health system, their individual and combine work completely failed... to maintain basic standards of care, dignity and respect for human rights," Mr Hyam said.
9 November 2010Last updated at 19:01 ETBy Michelle RobertsHealth reporter, BBC News
Women would need far fewer smears if the NHS switched to a new way of screening for cervical cancer, a Cancer Research UK scientist has said.
Good uptake of the HPV vaccine that can prevent the cancer means we can now start to move away from conventional testing, said Professor Peter Sasieni.
Girls who have already had the jab would only need the new type of smear test twice in their lifetime, he said.
Unvaccinated women would halve their number of checks from 12 to six.
Professor Sasieni, a Cancer Research UK scientist at Queen Mary, University of London, has advised the NHS screening programme in the past about how to improve screening and his recommendation to change the age range of women invited for screening was adopted.
HPV testing could prevent an even greater proportion of cervical cancer with just half the number of screens over a lifetime in women who have not had the HPV vaccine"
End QuoteProfessor Peter SasieniCancer screening expert
The professor, who presented his predictions at the National Cancer Research Institute conference in Liverpool, is now urging the government to consider making HPV testing the main method of cervical screening.
Currently, women are invited for a conventional smear test that takes a sample of cells from the cervix to be examined under a microscope in the lab to check for early warning signs of cancer.
The HPV test, which is carried out in a similar way to conventional smears, instead checks for an infection called human papillomavirus, or HPV, which is a known cause of cancer of the cervix.
Time for a change
Professor Sasieni said: "The UK cervical screening programme has done a fantastic job in reducing cervical cancer, but it is based on an old screening test.
"HPV testing could prevent an even greater proportion of cervical cancer with just half the number of screens over a lifetime in women who have not had the HPV vaccine."
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And young women who have had the HPV jab would only need two screens giving the "all clear", one at the age of 30 and another at the age of 45, he said. Any with worrying results would be referred for more testing and treatment as necessary.
Currently, women aged 25-49 are invited for cervical screening every three years, dropping to every five years between the ages of 50 and 64.
This means the average woman will undergo around 12 conventional smears in a lifetime.
Professor Sasieni says it is not that the old method is bad, more that it is now outdated and involves testing women many more times than necessary.
Data suggests one in five women do not turn up to have smears when invited.
Professor Sasieni says if HPV testing were to be rolled out from next year, it could be used nationally by 2015.
"With continued high coverage of HPV vaccination and targeting of screening resources towards unvaccinated women, cervical cancer should become a truly rare disease.
"And if the government plan for this change now, they could save hundreds of millions of pounds in the long run," he said.
In the UK, girls aged 12 to 13 are offered the HPV vaccine that protects against two strains of HPV, types 16 and 18. Girls have three injections over six months, given by a nurse.
Uptake in English schools has reached about 80% and in Scotland 90%.
Dr Lesley Walker, Cancer Research UK's director of cancer information, said the very high uptake of the vaccine in the UK had been a real success story.
"This is exciting and poses interesting questions for the screening programme in terms of the best way to screen women in the future who have been vaccinated.
"But for now it remains vitally important that all women continue to take up the invitation to go for screening when they receive it."
More than 2,800 women a year in the UK are diagnosed with cervical cancer and almost 1,000 die from it every year.
Professor Julietta Patnick, Director of the NHS Cancer Screening Programmes, said they were looking at how best to incorporate HPV testing into their current screening programme.
"Any plans to use HPV testing as a primary screening method will require rigorous investigation and testing, as well as the development of robust quality assurance protocols and standards, before it could be implemented."
10 November 2010Last updated at 08:44 ETBy Dave LeeBBC World Service
Young offenders are more likely to have suffered a brain injury compared with the rest of society, a study suggests.
A survey of 197 young male offenders found about half reported having had a childhood brain injury - three times higher than in non-offenders.
Multiple head injuries were linked with carrying out more violent crimes, says the University of Exeter team.
Better assessment of injuries could help prevent re-offending, they add.
The researchers asked 197 offenders aged 11 to 19 years about their past medical history, convicted crimes, mental health and drug use.
They considered the effects of traumatic brain injury alongside other factors such as deprivation and lack of life opportunities to determine if a childhood brain injury contributed to future acts of criminal behaviour.
The study, published in the journal Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, found that while a brain injury alone is unlikely to increase a child's chances of criminal activity, it could play a factor in those already susceptible to crime, and may increase the chance of repeat offences.
"The associations between brain injuries and crime are very problematic," explained Huw Williams, associate professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University of Exeter.
"It may not be causal in the sense of increasing the chances of crime, but it may well be a factor in terms of re-offending."
Rehabilitation
Evidence suggests that brain injuries, particularly those causing a loss of consciousness, can lead to problems in attention, memory, planning and behaviour.
What we need to think about is better access to neuro-rehabilitation for children and linking that into schools so that when head injury happens there's a system in place."
End QuoteProfessor Huw WilliamsUniversity of Exeter
Professor Williams says it is important not to allow children displaying some of these characteristics to "drift" at school due to being unable to concentrate.
"What we need to think about is better access to neuro-rehabilitation for children and linking that into schools so that when head injury happens there's a system in place," he said.
This study is a follow up to previous research on adult prisoners which found around 60% had some degree of traumatic brain injury in their past.
In both studies a head injury was associated with a greater risk of re-offending, said Professor Williams.
The study also found that adults who said they had suffered a head injury were, on average, five years younger when they were first sent to prison than those who had not been injured.
Heather Shilling, operations manager at the Warwickshire youth justice service, believes that a fuller medical assessment can help make the justice system fairer for young offenders.
"Young people who have got memory difficulties can get into a lot more trouble when they're in the system than a young person who hasn't had an injury," she said.
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She added that it would be difficult to do a complete medical assessment on all young offenders, but simply asking people if they have been knocked out in the past would help both the offender and the police officers.
"A good example is of a young person that might slur their speech, if they've had a fairly extreme brain injury.
"If they're in the police station, the police officers interviewing them might think that they are under the influence of some drugs or some drink. It might be nothing to do with that.
"If the young person appears to be uncooperative, it can have a worse outcome for that young person."
"Knocked out"
The study showed that among young offenders, repetitive injuries were common; a third of those suffering head injuries reported having been "knocked out" more than once.
These offenders were also linked to more violent crimes.
"We found there was a relationship with three or more head injuries and greater violence in offending history," said Professor Williams.
"It might be a marker that these people are having much more violent lives, and the head injuries are a consequence of that, but it may also be likely that they are starting to have increased problems in terms of the neuro-cognitive effect of a brain injury.
"These are things like impulse control problems, not really reading other people that well, understanding the facial expressions of others, maybe being too quick to act on a feeling of threat.
"All these kind of factors could be in the mix."
However, while the research appears to present alarming evidence, researchers insist parents should not overly worry if their child has had a head injury - as other social factors bear far greater influence on a child's future.
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