Conduct charge for ambulance man

An ambulance worker has been charged with misconduct in public office and perverting the course of justice after a man he was called to treat died. Sussex Police said Karl Harris, 44, of Tophill Close, Portslade, will appear before Brighton magistrates on 9 March.

It follows an investigation into the sudden death of Barry Baker, 58, at his home in Braybon Avenue, in Brighton. Mr Baker, who lived alone, had dialled 999 on 29 November last year saying he thought he was having a heart attack.

A statement from the South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Trust (SECAmb) said Mr Harris remained suspended from duty. A 35-year-old man who was also arrested has been released without charge and will face no further police action. However, he also remains suspended from duty by SECAmb pending an internal investigation.

I'm afraid I've no idea what's behind this either, but there you go.

Source: BBC

NI health fraud was 'preventable'

There's no actual injury or death to patients involved here, but it's £270,000 that could have been better spent elsewhere ...

A fraud which cost the health service in NI more than £270,000 was preventable, according to the Public Accounts Committee. Over eight years, solicitor George Brangam siphoned off money mostly while settling medical negligence cases. A number of recommendations have been put forward by the PAC including more fraud awareness training.

Mr Brangam would invoice health bodies for more money than the case had actually been settled for, then keep the extra cash, ranging from £1,250 up to £75,000. Paul Maskey, PAC chair, said the mistakes must not be repeated. "This is one of the worst examples of procurement practice that this committee has ever seen," he said.

Don't worry, Paul! This is the NHS, there'll be an even worse example along in a few minutes.

Source: BBC

Thousands of babies injected with contaminated vaccine

This isn't going to help confidence in the wake of the MMR debacle, is it?

Thousands of babies may have been injected with a vaccine contaminated with a potentially lethal blood-poisoning bacterium, it emerged last night.

Health officials withdrew 21,000 doses of the meningitis C vaccine from GP clinics around the country that were sent out about a week ago. It is not known how many babies may have received the jab in that time. More than 60,000 doses of the vaccine, which is offered to all four-month-old babies, could be contaminated with the hospital-acquired infection – the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium – but a third of these had already been sent to vaccination clinics before officials became aware of the problem.

Officials within the Department of Health and the vaccine's manufacturers are believed to have known of the problem since Tuesday but only issued an emergency recall of the vaccine last night after being contacted with details of the potential contamination by The Independent.

Last night the Tory health team demanded answers about why it had taken so long to withdraw the vaccine and said there may need to be an inquiry.

It is possible that many hundreds or even thousands of children could have received at least one dose. One official said that there have as yet been no reports of any adverse reactions to the meningitis C injection.

The revelation comes at a critical time given that many parents are still suspicious about childhood vaccinations, largely as a result of the unfounded scare over the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine which was incorrectly linked to childhood autism in a study published more than 10 years ago that has now been retracted.

Source: The Independent

Thousands given contaminated blood

It's an old story, but not to be overlooked:

An independent inquiry condemned the "procrastination" that led to thousands of patients becoming infected with HIV and Hepatitis C from contaminated blood. The inquiry, led by Labour Peer Lord Archer of Sandwell, said the infection of so many people was a "horrific human tragedy."

The authors of the report said they were "dismayed" at the time taken by the Government and scientific agencies to respond to the dangers of Hepatitis C and HIV infections.

The report noted there was "lethargic" progress towards national self-sufficiency in blood products in England and Wales, where it took 13 years compared to just five years in Ireland.

As a result the NHS bought blood from US suppliers who used what became known as "skid row" donors, such as prison inmates, who were more likely to have HIV and Hepatitis C.

The report said: "It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that commercial interests took precedence over public health concerns."

It added: "Whether the lack of urgency over much of this period arose from over-hesitant scientific advice or from a sluggish response by Government is now difficult to assess."

Nearly 2,000 haemophiliacs have died as a result of exposure to the contaminated blood in what leading medical expert Lord Winston called "the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS". Some 4,670 patients who received blood transfusions in the 1970s and 1980s were infected with Hepatitis C, of whom 1,243 were also infected with HIV.

Lord Archer's two-year privately-funded inquiry was set up after decades of campaigning from victims and their families. The report noted: "The haemophilia community feels that their plight has never been fully acknowledged or addressed."

The authors said a full public inquiry into the scandal should have been held much earlier to address the concerns of haemophiliacs. In conclusion they said: "Commercial priorities should never again override the interests of public health."

Source: The Metro

On-the-run killer hit by train

Convicted killer Paul Caesar died after he was hit by a train while on the run from a secure mental hospital, sources said today. The 37-year-old is believed to have committed suicide at Balham railway station, in south-west London, at about 1pm yesterday.

He went on the run from nearby Springfield Hospital, Tooting, two hours earlier after he was allowed to spend time in the grounds unescorted... His death will come as a massive embarrassment for bungling hospital officials who have overseen a steady stream of escapes.

Last November a suspected murderer and an alleged violent burglar escaped from the mental institution. Both men were on remand ahead of criminal proceedings and were being assessed for mental health conditions while at the hospital. After one of the men was recaptured he was charged with three robberies committed while on the run.

Springfield Hospital was condemned after one of its patients, John Barrett, killed a cyclist in Richmond Park in September 2004. The paranoid schizophrenic stabbed retired banker Denis Finnegan, 50, to death after walking out of the hospital's grounds. An inquiry, headed by mental health solicitor Robert Robinson, found carers placed too much emphasis on Barrett's wishes and did not properly assess the risk he posed.

In December 2006, two patients fled more than 400 miles after escaping from the secure mental health unit. The two, one of whom was rapist Anthony Rowley, were arrested in Edinburgh after being on the loose for about six hours. The men left the secure Shaftesbury Clinic at the hospital and jumped on a train to the Scottish capital. A member of staff was suspended and the unit was closed to new admissions as a result of the escape.

In 2004, Broadmoor patient Mark Ricketts, a schizophrenic with a history of serious violence, absconded during a day trip to Springfield. The criminal spent six days on the run and an inquiry later found staff forgot about his visit.

In 2000, the South West London and St George's Mental Health Trust, which runs the hospital, was criticised in an independent report. It found serious failures after patient Anthony Joseph was set free and went on to kill his social worker Jenny Morrison.
Ms Morrison was not told by hospital authorities that Joseph, a paranoid schizophrenic who believed he was the son of God, was a danger.

A spokeswoman for South West London and St George's NHS Trust declined to comment.

Source: The Independent

Call to improve complaints response

One in five NHS complaints sent for independent review are about treatment or a wrong diagnosis, a report has revealed. People who complain to an NHS trust about care but who are unhappy with the response can ask for a review by the Healthcare Commission.

In 2007/08, the Commission reviewed 7,827 of these complaints plus 1,112 unresolved from the previous year...

Of the total number of complaints, the Commission said almost 50% were upheld or were sent back to the trust for further work because the initial response was not good enough.

"This shows that the NHS still has much room for improvement in how it deals with complaints locally," the Commission said in its report, which focused on the NHS in England.

Right, that'll fix it. Let's set up a commission to investigate whether complaints are being handled correctly. Trying to fix the underlying system that gives rise to so many complaints is probably a bit too much to ask.

Source: The Metro

Hospital let man walk home to his death

Hospital let 80-year-old man walk home to his death - because payphone was broken.

Musgrove Park Hospital, in Taunton, Somerset,

Source the Mail

Confidential Hospital records dumped in unsecure boiler room

What a surprise!

Confidential and sensitive medical records have been left in an unlocked boiler room at a local hospital, a Sutton Guardian investigation can reveal.

Medical records at Sutton Hospital are easily accessible to members of the public as many are being kept in an unsecure boiler room located outside the main buildings.

The leaky boiler room is housing thousands of patient records, including names, addresses and full medical histories of individuals treated at the 19th century hospital.

A local reporter just walked in.

With a simple turn of the handle I was confronted by a huge pile of documents and boxes of highly sensitive medical records, and not a person in sight.

In two hours there, only one member of staff entered the building, and she did not seem too concerned by a stranger’s presence.

Two hours? Good grief.

Source: Sutton Guardian

Baby bled to death after circumcision, inquest told

A nine-week-old baby boy bled to death hours after being circumcised, an inquest was told. Celian Noumbiwe was operated on in 2007 at a doctor’s surgery in Reading but later his parents opened his nappy and found a “huge amount” of blood.

Recording a narrative verdict, the Berkshire Coroner criticised the lack of advice given to the couple on postoperative care, noting that the emergency number given to them did not work. After the surgery, Carole Youmby and her partner, Monthe Bautrel, originally from France, were encouraged to leave the surgery with the baby within ten minutes when he should have been observed for longer, the court was told.

Ms Youmby said that she had been told that the child’s nappy should not be changed for four hours. After calling the emergency number several times, the couple decided to call their GP in the morning. The next day, February 22, 2007, the child was taken from his home in Slough to the nearby Wexham Park Hospital where he died in his mother’s arms.

Heck knows why parents have their boys circumcised in the first place...
Source: The Times

Royal Bolton Hospital 'Lose' A&E Patients' Personal Details

More than 1,000 patients of the Royal Bolton Hospital have been contacted after their personal details were lost near the hospital grounds.

The hospital said the documents fell from a waste container which was taking them to be destroyed on 30 January.

The documents contained the names, addresses and dates of birth of patients who had recently attended A&E and other departments.

The hospital has assured patients their care will not have been affected.

Great. It may well lead to an identity theft though.

It's amazing how little information a criminal needs to steal your identity. These are some of the most commonly-used items:

Your full name, date of birth and address – data you are likely to carry in your wallet every day on items such as your driving licence

Or just might be picked up off the ground from a Bolton hospital. Why did they not simply shred them?

Source: BBC Manchester

Children kept on dirty wards at Ormond St

Sick children at high risk of infection were kept on dirty wards at Great Ormond Street hospital and medical equipment was not cleaned properly, a report has revealed.

The leading children's hospital has been criticised for breaching hygiene rules designed to stop the spread of superbugs. Inspectors from the Healthcare Commission visited the hospital twice in December and found that staff were not properly sterilising medical instruments used for internal examinations. It also found that dust had built up in wards for vulnerable children.

The commission's report said: "We saw reusable equipment used [which] had not been cleaned properly and found that staff members were unclear about who was responsible for cleaning this equipment." The room used to clean flexible endoscopes, which are long tubes used to look inside a patient's body, was also criticised for being cluttered, with unsuitable sinks and outdated decontamination equipment.

It also warned about the cleanliness of wards. The report said: "We visited three wards where children who may be particularly vulnerable to infection are cared for and found that the levels of cleanliness and maintenance on the wards varied. We found light dust, which indicated that the published cleaning frequencies were not being adhered to."

The commission has given the hospital six months to improve

"Six months"? Not "by next week" or "by tomorrow"?

Source: Evening Standard

BBC: Girl starved to death after op

An eight-year-old girl starved to death at home because she refused to open her mouth after a dental operation, an inquest heard.

Sophie Waller, from St Dennis, Cornwall, was so afraid of dentists she was sent to the Royal Cornwall Hospital to have her milk teeth taken out.

Afterwards, she would not open her mouth and was given a feeding tube.

The inquest heard that she died at home about three weeks later from acute renal failure.

...

Despite attempts to feed her and contact with a psychologist, Sophie's health deteriorated and eventually she could hardly walk.

She was found dead in her bed at home on 2 December.

Her parents said that four days before Sophie's death they rang the hospital to say they were bringing her back in but were told they could not.

A pathologist, Dr Marion Brundell, told the inquest that Sophie had died of acute renal failure from dehydration and starvation.

The hearing continues.

Where lessons will be learned...

Women turned away in labour

Women were turned away from maternity units because of more than 550 closures last year. Almost half shut their doors at some point because they were full or short-staffed.

'Every one of these figures tells an awful story of mothers being turned away at a hugely emotional time,' said shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley.

Source: The Metro

I sat for 14hrs in my nightie before ambulance took me home from the hospital

A 98-YEAR-OLD woman was left sitting in her night clothes for 14 hours in a hospital while waiting for an ambulance to take her home. Great-grandmother Catherine Anderson was treated at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, for fluid in her lungs, before being transported to Gartnavel Hospital for further treatment.

After a two-week stay, Mrs Anderson was cleared to be discharged and told she would be sent home. Nurses got her out of bed at 6am and she was put in a chair to wait for an ambulance to arrive. But patient transport staff did not arrive to take her home until 8.15pm.

Source: Evening Times, Scotland.

Prayer-row nurse can return to work

New guidelines on NHS workers discussing religion with patients and other staff were criticised as a nurse suspended for offering to pray for a patient was asked to return to work.

Caroline Petrie, 45, of Weston-super-Mare, was accused of failing to show a commitment to equality and diversity after the incident. But NHS North Somerset Primary Care Trust (PCT) said she was now welcome to return to work.

Campaigners say they fear more staff may find themselves in trouble if their religious beliefs come into conflict with the guidelines set out in a document called Religion or Belief: A Practical Guide for the NHS.

Can somebody explain this obsession with "equality and diversity", and why religious beliefs don't contribute thereto? Prayer is a form of complementary medicine, and while I'm not religious, it is well documented that a positive attitude and relaxed surroundings can contribute significantly to a quicker recovery.

Source: The Metro

NHS negligence costs 'will double'

The NHS is expected to pay out more than £700 million in clinical negligence payments next year, the Conservative Party said.
The rise to £713 million is almost double this year's bill of £396 million and will take up almost a third of the additional funding hospitals will receive.

Shadow Health Minister Mark Simmonds said the current "inefficient system" incurred "vast legal costs" for NHS Trusts.

Source: The Metro

Doctor guilty of adrenaline shot death

Indian-born Priya Ramnath was given a suspended six-month jail sentence after being found guilty of killing Patricia Leighton in 1998 following a trial at Birmingham Crown Court...

Mrs Justice Rafferty added that the hospital registrar's defining error was that she had chosen not to listen to a sister working alongside her... Ramnath, whose sentence was suspended for two years, administered the adrenaline against the advice of three colleagues, the trial was told.

The doctor, who came back to the UK last February after being threatened with extradition, also failed to speak to a consultant anaesthetist at Stafford District General before injecting the drug into Mrs Leighton.

Source: The Metro.

Sorry, "six months suspended"? Did I read that correctly?

Hospital boss steps down after trolley wait mistakes

The chief executive of an award-winning NHS hospital has resigned after taking responsibility for mistakes that left eight patients waiting for more than 12 hours on trolleys before being admitted for treatment.

Tara Donnelly stepped down from the top job at West Middlesex University hospital in Isleworth, west London, on Tuesday, the trust said today. Donnelly accepted that the hospital provided an unacceptable standard of service during a period of heavy pressure on the A&E department two weeks ago. A&E staff in England are required by the Department of Health to decide within four hours whether a patient needs admission to hospital. The trust then has up to 12 hours to find a free bed and admit the patient to a ward.

At least she resigned, although one does wonder what sort of 'severance package' she's expecting.

Source: The Guardian.

NHS outside smoking ban signalled

NHS Grampian has taken a step towards banning smoking in all its grounds with the launch of a consultation.

Smoking has already been prohibited inside hospital buildings. The consultation on extending the ban to all grounds will include staff, patients, visitors and local community groups.

Tobacco control co-ordinator Derek Petrie said: "NHS Grampian's aim is to improve the health of everyone in the north east."

Source: BBC

No doubt Dick P will give this the response it deserves ..?

See also points 6 and 7 on this earlier post as to the real cost.

'People think I deserve to die,' says cancer-stricken Jade Goody

The 27-year-old has stage three cancer. It was misdiagnosed four times, but Jade says she won't seek compensation from the hospital, as she thinks taking money from the NHS is wrong.

She said her focus was instead on surviving.

Source: The Mail, via Haddock, via DK.

Thousands given fake drugs by NHS

Thousands of people suffering from life-threatening illnesses could have taken fake drugs handed over pharmacy counters. They were the unwitting victims of a counterfeiting ring which managed to get 70,000 packs of medicine distributed within the NHS.

Although 45,000 packs of drugs were recovered, the remaining 25,000 were handed out to patients. It has proved impossible to trace who was given the drugs, taken for prostate cancer, heart and stroke conditions as well as schizophrenia, and the scandal has led to calls for tighter controls on sale of medicines.

It is thought the drugs were linked to Chinese businessman Kevin Xu, who was jailed last month for six-and-a-half years for his part in an international counterfeiting racket. The drugs were probably bought by British wholesalers from France, where they are often cheaper, before being repackaged in new boxes or given new labelling here.

The problem came to light when one wholesaler noticed discrepancies in the labelling. The counterfeit drugs were thought to contain between 50 and 80 per cent of the correct dosage and could have cut chances of successful treatment.

Source: The Metro

Great Ormond Street staff grilled by police after baby dies of glucose overdose

The story has taken its inevitable sad end.

Staff at Great Ormond Street children's hospital have been questioned by police after a premature baby died from a suspected overdose of glucose. Poppy Davies died on Sunday evening aged five weeks when doctors switched her life support machine off.

Her devastated parents were told that she had been injected with glucose as part of a routine operation, but that the level in her bloodstream had become 'dangerously high'. Doctors explained that it was highly unlikely baby Poppy - who was born five weeks early - would ever recover.

What are the chances that there will be a serious internal review into procedures leading to the implementation of new guidelines (continued page 94).

Source; Daily Mail.

The PCT List: New Labour's NHS legacy Part 2

The Ferret Fancier has updated the list of apparent non-jobs in a particular Primary Care Trust. It kicks off with

* Acting Purchasing Team Leader
* Acting Supplies Manager
* Acting Supplies Support Team Leader/Trainee Buyer
* Action On Smoking Coordinator
* Active Lifestyles Development Officer
* Admin Assistant
* Admin Support Officer (Commissioning)
* Administration Officer – Supplies
* Administrator – Health Promotion
* [etc]

and the full list runs to over four hundred job titles, and in many cases there is more then one person with that job description.

Source: The Ferret Fancier

£12.7bn spent on NHS computer system that doesn't work

An investigation by The Times and Computer Weekly shows that the overrun of the largest IT projects totals £18.6 billion. Those include a controversial plan to computerise all NHS patients’ records, originally estimated to cost £2.3 billion over three years but the cost of which has grown to £12.7 billion.

Nigel Edwards, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, which represents 90 per cent of NHS organisations and which welcomed the review, said: “You can’t do modern healthcare without a computer system. But the Care Records system at the heart of the programme isn’t working. The software isn’t functioning. There is a growing pessimism among the people I represent that it can actually deliver.”

This works out at just under half a mill per doctor in the NHS ... for a system that doesn't work, and may never be likely to. Our money, of course.

I would ask in exasperation, who pays the idiots who make monumental cock-ups like this? But that's us too, isn't it. Good grief.

Source: The Times

Doctors 'can work longer than 48 hour week'

Some doctors will be able to work more than 48 hours a week despite new European regulations on working times, following fears over their training and patient safety.

Phew! That's all right then. Or is it?

But doctors' groups said that the move did not go far enough and that the limit could reduce standards and cut patient care. The Royal College of Surgeons has warned that the change could also affect staff handovers, making them rushed and endangering patient safety... The opt-out will apply to between 20 and 30 units at trusts across the country, including services providing 24-hour care, extremely specialist teams and remote and rural units... The European Commission will respond to the request by the start of May.

What? Between twenty and thirty units out of hundreds or thousands? The European Commission might or might nod give the nod to this in a few months' time?

Source: The Telegraph

'More dangerous' strain of superbug found in Scottish hospitals

Superbugs are becoming even more 'super' in Scotland.

A "POTENTIALLY more dangerous" form of the C diff bug has been discovered in Scottish hospitals.

Health chiefs have revealed that the strain of Clostridium difficile, known as Type 078, has been reported more than a dozen times in the past two years. The news has sparked calls for more action to combat hospital-acquired infections.

Figures obtained by Labour MSP Jackie Baillie showed there has been 16 cases of Type 078 reported since 2007.

The Dumbarton MSP said evidence indicates it can cause a more serious illness than other strains of the bug.

Worry not, however, as Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon is on the case, because ...

"It is vital that everyone has confidence in their NHS and the standard of care they will receive in hospital."

Feeling confident, anyone?

Source: The Scotsman

Goodness Gracious Me

The writer of such shows as Goodness Gracious me and The Kumars has died at the age of only FORTY from a streptoccal infection at Whipps Cross hospital

Link from BBC here

NHS shortfall forces toddler's parents to pay £300 for special chair after operation

LITTLE Amelie Gledhill faced spending eight weeks lying on her back because of an NHS equipment shortfall.

After surgery for a dislocated hip, the 17-month-old, of Fern Rise, Elland, was left with a cast that meant she could not sit up.

Her parents, Anne and Jon, say their baby girl would have had to spend the eight-week recovery period lying down if they had not shelled out £288 for a specially-adapted chair.

[Anne Gledhill said] "Physios and occupational therapists tried to help us but said their hands were tied as there was no budget for this kind of equipment."

Free at the point of delivery? Hmmm.

Source: Halifax Evening Courier

NHS carbon cutting plan launched

An ambitious plan to slash NHS carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 has been launched by ministers. Ideas include using technology to reduce patient and staff travel, and perhaps even reducing the amount of meat on hospital menus.

The NHS accounts for 3% of the UK's "carbon footprint" - making it a bigger polluter than some small countries. The plan, which applies to the NHS in England, calls for 75% of NHS waste to be recycled by 2020...

Well, what an excellent use of the taxpayers' money that was supposed to pay for ... er ... a health service?

Source: BBC

Parents' grief as daughter dies after hospital 'forced them to change her treatment'

A little girl with a very rare medical condition died after a hospital threatened her parents with a police protection order if they did not comply with a new treatment plan, it has been claimed.

Via JuliaM, please leave comments over at hers.

Source: Daily Mail

Warning over fresh NHS IT delays

The introduction of computerised NHS patient records in England could be hit by more delays, MPs warn. The Committee on Public Accounts has thrown fresh doubt on a 2015 deadline for the ambitious £12bn project.

Its chairman said that even in trusts already using parts of the system, staff were unimpressed and the cost to the NHS was uncertain. The government said new IT systems in the NHS were delivering "better, safer and faster care".
--------------------
"Essential systems are late, or, when deployed, do not meet expectations of clinical staff", Edward Leigh MP, Chairman, Public Accounts Committee
--------------------
The NHS Programme for IT in England, which aims to allow information about patients to be shared securely between hospitals and GP practices, has been dogged by problems since its launch in 2002. The project was originally intended to be completed by next year, but its complexity has delayed this by up to five years.

Nice work if you can get it!

Source: BBC

NHS Ageism: Case studies

Research published by the charity Help The Aged finds that many geriatricians think the NHS is institutionally ageist.

The doctors, all members of the British Geriatrics Society, also said they would have concerns about how the NHS would treat them in old age.

Three doctors miss teen's broken leg

A teenager walked for ten weeks on a broken leg after three doctors failed to spot his football injury. Michael Boyle went to hospital twice and saw his GP - but was told repeatedly his fracture was a soft tissue wound.

The 16-year-old's father, also called Michael, said: "I'm fuming my lad went through all that pain. We were just getting fobbed off. This is not the NHS I expect and pay for." It was only when his father took Michael, of Allerton, Merseyside, to a physiotherapist at Everton FC that the break was discovered. The family is considering legal action.

Source: The Metro

Bug scandal boss fights for cash

This story has been running since 2007, but there are still those who insist on being rewarded for failure, incompetence and avoidable deaths:

The former boss of an NHS trust where where 90 people died in a superbug scandal is asking the High Court to uphold her £250,000 payoff. Rose Gibb left her job days before the publication of a damning report into hygiene standards at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in Kent. The trust negotiated the £250,000 deal but withheld £175,000 after being told not to pay it by the government.

The hearing in London is expected to last three days. Counsel for the trust, Jane McNeill, said the case was significant for the public generally, as well as for the trust. The court was told Ms Gibb was put on "gardening leave" from her £150,000-a-year chief executive post at the beginning of October 2007.

Source: BBC

Baby died because hospital had no one on night duty to do C-section

Here's an old incident fully reported a couple of weeks ago that we may have overlooked:

A baby boy died minutes after birth – because the hospital had no anaesthetist on duty for an emergency caesarian. Clare Russell, who went into labour with son Dylan 10 weeks early, arrived at the maternity unit in the middle of the night. She desperately needed a C-section to save her son, who was coming out feet first in the breech position. But the hospital had a cost-cutting policy of not having an anaesthetist during the night. Clare had to give birth naturally, and Dylan died when the umbilical cord got wrapped around him, starving him of blood and oxygen. Research has shown a C-section in those circumstances would almost certainly have saved Dylan...

Three days before Clare gave birth, her waters broke and she was taken to hospital by husband Tim, 32. As she was only at the 30-week stage, doctors kept her in for two days to monitor her and the baby – but then sent her home, despite her complaining of agonising back pain. Hours later, at 11.40pm, Clare went back to hospital in agony but a midwife left her alone and went to search for a doctor to examine her.

Clare, who has a son, Cade, 14, said: “They were so understaffed. The midwife gave us a heart monitor and told us to see if we could get a reading. I had no gas and air and my back was killing me.” After almost an hour, a senior doctor arrived but waited 20 minutes before phoning the on-call consultant Dr Gornhill at home. He ordered a clip to be placed on Dylan to check his heart rate. It showed the baby was distressed and by the time Dr Gornhill got to hospital at 1.10am Clare had almost given birth. Dylan died minutes after being born on November 29, 2003.

The hospital has admitted medical records of Dylan’s condition had been lost and notes from the day Clare’s waters broke were wrong. Dr Gornhill also admitted Clare should not have been sent home and the hospital admitted taking too long to alert the consultant about Clare’s condition.

Source: The Daily Mirror

Teen dies after hospital repeatedly sent him home with painkillers

A teenager died from a brain infection after months of repeatedly being turned away from Mayday Hospital with just painkillers.

The Croydon hospital has now launched an investigation into how 17-year-old Steven Deans' life-threatening condition was missed by a succession of A&E medics.

And his mother Marcia Deans, who buried her son on Tuesday, says she intends to sue for negligence. Marcia, of Pickering Gardens, Addiscombe, said: "They killed my only son. If they had done their jobs properly, if they had done thorough checks, he would still be alive. I can understand once, but he went back to them time and time again, and still they sent him away. When I took him in November his whole head was numb with pain and swollen. He was crying and being sick, and the smallest noise affected him terribly."

Good. Another investigation launched. That'll fix it.

Source: Croydon Today

Labour 'rattled' on mixed-sex wards

The Government is "rattled" over its failure to scrap mixed-sex hospital wards, a leaked memo has revealed. In the document, Health Secretary Alan Johnson says Labour has "got it wrong" over the practice, which the party has repeatedly promised to eradicate. Mr Johnson is quoted as saying: "Sane and rational arguments about why it can't be done no longer cut it with me, it's going to happen."

... Mr Johnson is expected to unveil a new initiative on the issue next week.

Last month data from the Conservatives revealed that around one in seven of hospital trusts still used at least one open-plan mixed-sex ward. Curtains were still being used to segregate patients in some areas, it was found.

The data also showed that between October 2007 and September 2008 there were 6,485 recorded breaches of procedures for segregating patients by sex in hospital trusts and 30 in mental health trusts...

Remind me, how long have they been in power, nearly twelve years or something, isn't it? If they can't even get this right ...

Op gran left outside in her nightie

An oap recovering from surgery was left outside a hospital in the freezing cold for an hour in only her nightie.

Eileen Rowland, 78, had been led out of the building by a nurse to wait for an ambulance home. The medic then went back to fetch the great gran's jacket but never returned.

Weak from an operation to replace a leg artery, she was left shivering in her gown before a taxi arrived instead of an ambulance. It had gone to the wrong entrance. Mrs Rowland, who had already had a 10-hour wait in a corridor for drugs, said: "They forgot about me. I didn't dare move as I thought I'd miss the ambulance." Royal Blackburn Hospital apologised to the pensioner, of Burnley. It admitted: "It was totally unacceptable."

Source: The Daily Mirror

The NHS “constitution” - a charter for spin doctors, lawyers and management consultants.

It came as no surprise to discover it is written in that same deadening mixture of bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, legalese and the blindingly obvious that characterise much of this government’s propaganda, Green and White papers and so-called consultation documents. Let me give you a flavour...

Read the rest and leave comments over at John Redwood's (click title for link)

NHS starts inquiry into deaths of patients with learning difficulties

An official investigation is to examine why people with serious learning difficulties have died while under NHS care, after alleged neglect led to at least six fatalities, ministers will reveal today.

The health secretary, Alan Johnson, is setting up an inquiry which will look at whether the quality of treatment that doctors, nurses and other health service staff gave to such vulnerable patients contributed to their dying unnecessarily early.

Johnson will announce the formation of a confidential inquiry, a form of investigation used in healthcare to see if there are any common links between deaths in similar patients or circumstances.

"Things that happened in the past in the NHS weren't acceptable. We want to look back at cases where people have died prematurely and learn the lessons of those deaths," said a senior Whitehall source involved in setting up the inquiry.

The move is part of an overhaul of how the NHS treats those with learning difficulties after a government-commissioned independent inquiry last July uncovered evidence of serious failings in care. Led by Sir Jonathan Michael, it followed the publication of a report in 2007 by the charity Mencap, called Death by Indifference. It accused the NHS of "institutional discrimination" against such people and highlighted six individuals who it claimed died after their health needs were ignored by NHS staff as a direct result of their learning difficulties.

Other measures being unveiled today include improved training for all NHS staff; annual health checks for anyone with a mental disability, funded by an extra £20m a year into family doctors' contracts; and personal health action plans for them.

I've highlighted a few buzzwords for you, just to get the ball rolling.

Source: The Guardian

Health trust spends £700,000 teaching children to clean their teeth

Mark Wallace, a spokesman for the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "This is a huge amount of money spent on an initiative of questionable value.

"When people are struggling to find a dentist that has room for them, the NHS should be focusing on that not on doing things people can do for themselves.

"A big part of our current health crisis is down to the fact that personal responsibility has been taken away from people.

"We should have an NHS that expects people to buy their own toothbrushes but is willing to provide them with dentists when needed."

Nice Guidance Not

From the Times today

She is also among the one in five sufferers — mostly women — for whom the most common drug, alendronate, is not suitable, meaning that she is prescribed the more costly strontium ranelate. But under draft guidance from NICE, she said, “my doctor would be unable to prescribe an appropriate medication until I had fractured a bone and my bone density had got considerably worse.

“This seems like madness. It's going to cost the NHS a lot more than the treatment costs if people break their bones.”

Hospital to review body storage

Warrington Hospital says it will publish an internal review into why the remains of stillborn and miscarried babies were stored without permission. An investigation found there had been three cases since 2006, where remains were kept without parents' permission.

The hospital has apologised to a woman from Cheshire whose miscarried baby's body was stored for almost two years. Dr Hilary Furniss, from the hospital, said procedures had been changed to make sure it never happened again. "We are awaiting the final presentation of the full report, and until I and others in the trust receive it, I cannot comment on the actual details of what went wrong."

Er, why do they need to employ a commission to carry out an 'internal review' into 'procedures' and 'present a full report'? What's wrong with just asking the relatives for permission?

Source: BBC

The NHS is to pay fat people up to £425 to lose weight.

Linked to JuliaM's Blog. Comment there.

Daily Mail Article link

Health centre faces death inquiry

Any sensible reform of the NHS must involve 'patient vouchers', which would allow people to choose where and how to be treated. It does not matter who provides the care (it may well be local councils, trade unions, charities, universities or churches, as in Germany), the point is that they compete. It appears that the NHS prefers the worst-of-all-worlds option, being central allocation of taxpayers' money to selected private suppliers - that way there is no accountability combined with miserable standards ...

An INQUIRY is being launched into a privately run treatment centre for NHS patients in Yorkshire following scathing criticism of the care of a university lecturer who died after surgery. John Hubley, 58, of West Park, Leeds, suffered massive bleeding after routine keyhole surgery went badly wrong at Eccleshill Independent Sector Treatment Centre in Bradford in January 2007.

An inquest in November heard that vital surgical equipment and supplies to resuscitate him were not available and there were long delays in receiving blood, some of which eventually arriving in a taxi.

Source: Yorkshire Post

"Death Rate Recording Is Not Compulsory" Says Department of Health

Missing Out An Essential Issue

During my own investigations around Ward 87, I found out that the death rate ie mortality rate had never been recorded. Essentially, no one knows whether the death rate was statistically better or worse than a similar average ward in the same or different Trust. This example is extrapolated to the subject of Dr Harold Shipman. We all ask ourselves the question - why wasn't he caught sooner? Well, if the Shipman Inquiry is read in detail, you will find that he worked at a number of hospitals. According to the Department of Health document below, recording death rates isn't compulsory therefore there would not have been any death rate statistics monitoring in any wards within these hospitals. There is a reason why the mortality rate is not recorded. The Labour Government does not want poor standards of care to be detected. This is quite a convenient means to deny the existence of poor standards of care.

In summary, if there are no mortality statistics, there will not be a way of early detection of poor care, mismanagement or the next Harold Shipman.

Just to say Dame Janet Smith missed this basic point in her Shipman Inquiry review.

DE00000364718 [ Department of Health]

Dear Dr Pal,

Thank you for your further email of 6 November to the Department of Health about mortality rates. I have been asked to reply on this occasion. I can confirm that there is no regulation or law requiring individual hospital wards to calculate patient death rates. I hope this reply clarifies the Department’s position.

Yours sincerely,

James Butler

Customer Service Centre

Department of Health

Healthcare budget changes planned

Some of this seems mildly promising:

The new Health Bill will enable patients to receive direct payments to spend on health services of their choice. Lord Darzi, who will unveil the plans, first trailed the idea last year in his report on the future of the NHS.

It is thought the payments would particularly benefit people with long-term conditions such as Parkinson's or Motor Neurone disease, or those who use mental health services.

But I don't like the sound of this:

The Bill will also place a legal duty on the NHS and its providers to take note of the NHS Constitution, which sets out the "rights and responsibilities" of patients and staff.

For better or worse, we are forced to pay for the NHS through our taxes, we are customers; we have "rights" and the NHS has "responsilities".

Or this:

Other contents include previously announced measures to protect children and young people from the harm caused by smoking ...

Source: The Metro

Police question NHS staff over C.diff deaths

Opposition parties have been calling for a public enquiry for months now on the subject of 18 C.diff deaths in Scotland. Labour Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon has consistently resisted the calls.

The Police are not so coy.

Nurses are to face police questioning over deaths from Clostridium difficile at a Dunbartonshire hospital, it has emerged.

Officers will interview staff at the Vale of Leven Hospital, where a C.diff outbreak was linked to 18 deaths.

A report which identified failures in hygiene and infection control was passed to prosecutors last year.

A total of 16 CID and uniformed officers are investigating the case.

The best Nicola Sturgeon has come up with so far, amid her stalling, is to say that she is "sympathetic" with family members who want an enquiry. They have been saying the same for quite a while, but it's only when the calls were renewed once the Police got involved, that Ms Sturgeon could even lower herself to sympathy. Still no public enquiry planned though.

If 18 deaths in one hospital isn't grounds for an immediate enquiry, what is?

Source: BBC Scotland

C.diff cases drop by 45 per cent in London

This all sounds very promising, doesn't it:

Latest figures show there were 1,022 cases between July and September, compared with 1,858 in the same period in 2007. The data from the Health Protection Agency shows London is fighting the superbug more successfully than the rest of the country. Nationally the rate of C.diff in all patients over the age of two has dropped by 33 per cent.

Guy Young, NHS London's Director for Infection Control, said: "These results are the work of a fantastic effort by the NHS in London. Infection control is consistently one of the public's most important considerations when choosing a hospital."

Graziella Kontowski, who runs a C.diff support group in London, said: "There is still a lot of work to be done and people should not get complacent, but this is welcoming news." Kings College Hospital, which saw a drop of 67 per cent in cases, and Epsom and St Helier University hospitals, where there was a 60 per cent fall, were among the most dramatic reductions over the year.

Its does beg a few questions though:

1. If it's that easy, why weren't they doing whatever it was that they are doing last year?

2. Are the statistics honestly compiled?

3. A year on year fall is a good thing, of course, but how do those figures compare with the figures for, ooh, let's say five years ago?

Source: Evening Standard

Ormond St tot overdose probe

COPS are investigating as a premature baby fights for life from a massive overdose in a top hospital. Poppy Davies was left severely brain damaged and paralysed at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. The 14-day-old mite is “critical” on life support after a massive glucose intake and doctors say she has a “poor” chance of survival.

Her distraught parents Carly Davies, 22, and David Daly, 21, of Grays, Essex, are at her bedside. The tot was born three months premature in Norwich and transferred to the world famous Central London hospital last Saturday for a minor operation.

She was due to receive 2-4 millilitres of glucose intravenously on Sunday. Measured later, her blood sugar was up to 75 times higher than it should have been, at 150ml. A source said: “That’s the equivalent of just two teaspoonfuls of sugar — but hugely harmful to a baby so small and frail.”

Hospital management called in Scotland Yard. Detectives are investigating the possibility Poppy was mistakenly given an overdose by a junior female nurse.

Source: The Sun

Toddler sucks on used needle at 'health' centre

Here we have another example of the age old problem of a lethargic attitude in the public sector.

A toddler's parents must wait 12 months to discover whether he has been infected by a discarded needle he put into his mouth at a health centre.

Harvey Mills, aged 21 months, took the hypodermic needle from a bin in an open cupboard at Cannon Street Health Centre, Hathershaw, Oldham.

Harvey's mother Shareen Mills, 28, was holding his four-month-old brother for an injection when she looked up and saw Harvey with the needle in his mouth, standing next to an overflowing sharps bin.

Health officials have apologised and have started an investigation

I should bloody think so too.

[Gail Richards, chief executive of NHS Oldham, said:] "We have also issued immediate instructions to all NHS staff emphasising the importance of ensuring sharps bins are kept secure and used appropriately at all times."

Why should this need to be emphasised at all? Isn't it simple common sense? A jeweller wouldn't leave a display cabinet unlocked and unguarded while he/she pierced another customer's ears, yet we regularly hear of NHS workers going about their duties in an incredibly cavalier manner?

At least the jeweller would just lose some stock, which isn't ideal, but is easily rectifiable. There is more than just a financial penalty for cock-ups in the NHS though. In this case, it's possible that a child's entire future could be blighted due to one startling lack of diligence.

Source: BBC Manchester

Girl, 5, dies during ‘needless’ surgery

A girl aged five has died during surgery to remove an appendix that had nothing wrong with it. Paige Young's heart stopped twice during the operation, leaving her family devastated. After a post-mortem exam­ination they were told her appendix had been healthy.

"The doctors said it was a bug or a virus but they weren't sure," said mother Siobhan Smith, 26. "Paige kept saying, 'Don't make me go back to hospital.'"

Source: The Metro

Dying woman treated in hospital bathroom

A dying woman was put in a hospital bathroom with an overflowing bin because there were no beds. Gladys Joynes was in the makeshift ward for up to 12 hours.

The Alzheimer's sufferer, 79, was left off her drip because there were no sockets in the room in the Royal Liverpool Hospital – which has apologised.

The ordeal was 'an affront to human dignity', her family said. Daughter Kathleen Huxley added: 'It is no good blaming staff on the ground[??]. It is the government which needs to explain.'

Source: The Metro

Bacteraemia.

Bacteraemia "recorded" Only

I always think that is an interesting word. To the lay person it means " bacterial infection". To medics, we all know that bacteraemia cannot be diagnosed without obtaining a blood culture. Essentially, the patient may have MRSA but if the blood culture is not taken by the doctor, they cannot be diagnosed to have " bacteraemia".

The Health Protection Agency lists this article "Quarterly Reporting Results for Clostridium difficile infections, MRSA bacteraemia and GRE bacteraemia"

So the language is particularly interesting. They specify " bacteraemia" not simply "MRSA infection". It is a nice way to hoodwink the public.

So what happens if the blood cultures are not done by doctors?

We go to the NHS Documentation and see what the recommendations are

Blood cultures are taken to identify patients with bacteraemia. There are many signs and symptoms in a patient which may suggest bacteraemia and clinical judgement is required, but the following indicators should be taken into account when assessing a patient for signs of bacteraemia or sepsis:

• core temperature out of normal range;
• focal signs of infection;
• abnormal heart rate (raised), blood pressure (low or raised) or respiratory rate (raised);
• chills or rigors;
• raised or very low white blood cell count; and
• new or worsening confusion.
NB: Signs of sepsis may be minimal or absent in the very young and the elderly.

So if the above symptoms are not present, there is no blood culture. For many elderly patients the above symptoms are not present. For instance, there may be no temperature change or there may be atypical signs and symptoms. It also fails to address the fact that many people don't behave like the textbooks. Each Trust has their own protocols for blood cultures. Put it this way, doctors don't do cultures unless they really have to or to put it another way, they are not encouraged to do so unless it is imperative. The criteria of blood cultures is arbitrary, open to interpretation and without proper guidance or guidelines, it is open to varying subjective assessment.

So if blood cultures were not done, there would be no diagnosis of bacteraemia. If there was no diagnosis of bacteraemia, there would be no record in the government statistics. If there is no record, the government can legitimately say that those aren't MRSA bateraemia cases. For all those patients who have MRSA in their sputum or on their skin or even wound MRSA and subsequently die, are not part of the statistics for the government, yet they all have MRSA infection.

To illustrate the above, my father had MRSA in his sputum, MRSA on his skin, a high white count but because no blood cultures were done, MRSA was not on his death certificate and he is not on the government statistics cited as a " MRSA related death". I wonder how many patients come within this group? I wonder if the actual number of MRSA deaths is much higher than the "bacteraemia" counted up.

It is my view that there is a culture of not recording MRSA deaths by not doing blood cultures. It is quite a clever way of convincing the UK population that we don't have a problem or that the problem is improving. It would be nice to know how many blood cultures are actually done on patients with an "infection". :). I believe the answer would be " very few".

Dr Rita Pal
http://www.ward87.blogspot.com
http://www.nhsexposedblog.blogspot.com

Doctor's lawyer fights extradition

A lawyer for a doctor charged with killing a British patient with a lethal injection of adrenalin a decade ago has said he will fight her extradition to the UK. Priya Ramnath, 39, was arrested at the Woodland Hills Hospital in Lufkin, Texas, where she was working as a licensed anaesthetist, on November 30 - almost 10 years after she fled the UK...

The doctor moved to the US in 1998 just days after allegedly injecting Patricia Leighton, 51, from Burntwood, Staffordshire, with adrenalin against her colleagues' advice. She was charged with manslaughter but escaped prosecution because the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) missed a five-year deadline to apply for her extradition by three days.

Source: The Metro.

UK Death Rates Higher Than Any EU Country

The Business of Death.

A little known article is the Times Daily . I must have talked about this article many times on Ward 87. These statistics have been ignored by the government. They did though release this article a few months later on how "death rates are decreasing". Amazing change in statistics in the shortest time possible for any country :). El Gordo must have been working overtime to ensure the important MRSA stats were not recorded. What they didn't tell us of course is that they only featured selective mortality rates and that half of them were not recorded.

This is what the Times Daily states :-

"Great Britain's big-government National Health Service. Low-quality, taxpayer-funded health care killed more than 17,000 Britons in 2004, according to the TaxPayers' Alliance in London.

The TPA examined the World Health Organization's latest data to contrast the NHS with Dutch, French, German and Spanish health systems, which are less government-dominated. Specifically, the pro-market group measured "mortality amenable to health care" - deaths that a medical organization realistically should prevent.

While those four countries averaged a 106.6 amenable mortality rate, Britain was almost 29 percent deadlier, with its rate of 135.3. The TPA thus calculates that the NHS took the lives of 17,157 Britons who otherwise would have survived were they treated by doctors across the English Channel. This figure is more than two-and-a-half times Britain's yearly alcohol-related deaths, and is quintuple its annual highway fatalities. Comparing 60 million Brits to 300 million Yanks, this is like a federally operated health agency eliminating 85,785 Americans in 2004"

Posted by Dr Rita Pal

As NICE and the UK Go, So Goes the Globe in Evaluating Drugs

Rule, Britannia! Britannia rules the pharmacy shelves. A new British empire of a sort may be in the offing: a model for judging the cost-effectiveness of new medicines.

At least it’s shaping up that way. The U.K.’s controversial approach for deciding whether medical technology, including drugs, is worth its cost is winning favour with national governments around the globe. The model used by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE, a British government agency, is already influencing health policies in Austria, Brazil, Columbia, Thailand and beyond, the New York Times reports.

Sky-rocketing prices for drugs and discounts the U.K. has snagged from manufacturers, including Johnson & Johnson and Novartis, have whetted the appetites of governments looking to do the same, the paper says. The story is the latest in the Times series on “The Evidence Gap.”

Hospitals to reveal superbug rate

"The Scottish Government is to start regular monitoring of rates of MRSA and Clostridium difficile in hospitals. The new "infection report cards" were a key recommendation of an expert report following the outbreak of C.diff at the Vale of Leven hospital last year. A Strathclyde Police investigation is continuing into the deaths of 18 people linked to that outbreak...

Last year Ms Sturgeon told the SNP conference in Perth that NHS boards would have to reduce the rate of the infection in hospitals by at least 30% by 2011."

Er, shouldn't the target be to reduce infections by 100%?

Source: BBC Scotland.

Chalk A Few More Deaths Up To The NHS

A vulnerable patient starved to death in an NHS hospital after 26 days without proper nourishment.

Martin Ryan, 43, had suffered a stroke which left him unable to swallow. But a 'total breakdown in communication' meant he was never fitted with a feeding tube. Mr Ryan, who had Down's syndrome, died in hospital in Kingston-upon-Thames. An internal inquiry by the hospital found that doctors had thought nurses were feeding him through a tube in his nose. By the time they found out this was not happening, he was too weak for an operation to insert a tube into his stomach. He died in agony five days later.

Source: Dick Puddlecote

NHS: Still Not Free, y'know

Yeah, because all of the treatment Trev gets is free. It just appears from nowhere. No-one ever has to pay for it. The NHS is free, people! Free! Go enjoy it! It is all for you! For free! Yay!

Except, it isn't free. At all. It is free at the point of service. But everyone has paid for the NHS. Everyone who has ever paid taxes or National Insurance *contributions* has paid for the NHS. Being free at the point of service does not make it free. And if we finally get everyone to understand that the NHS isn't really free, maybe we will get more people questioning whether they are actually happy with the generally rather crappy point of service at the NHS. And maybe, just maybe, gets people to consider whether it is worth keeping the NHS - especially in its current bloated, and utterly ineffective state.

Source: The Nameless Libertarian

US: Universal healthcare and the waistline police

Imagine a country where the government regularly checks the waistlines of citizens over age 40. Anyone deemed too fat would be required to undergo diet counseling. Those who fail to lose sufficient weight could face further "reeducation" and their communities subject to stiff fines.

Is this some nightmarish dystopia?

No, this is contemporary Japan.

The Japanese government argues that it must regulate citizens' lifestyles because it is paying their health costs. This highlights one of the greatly underappreciated dangers of "universal healthcare." Any government that attempts to guarantee healthcare must also control its costs. The inevitable next step will be to seek to control citizens' health and their behavior. Hence, Americans should beware that if we adopt universal healthcare, we also risk creating a "nanny state on steroids" antithetical to core American principles.

Organs of 50 NHS donors are sold to foreigners who pay £75,000 for each operation

Organs from British NHS donors are being given to private foreign patients ahead of desperately-ill Britons, it was revealed last night. Some 50 livers were given to patients from Cyprus, Greece and other countries last year, even though 259 British patients were waiting for life-saving transplants. The figures, uncovered by freedom of Information requests, triggered outrage. Professor Peter Friend, president of the British Transplantation Society, said: 'While there is a surfeit of UK residents awaiting transplant they should have a priority.

Source: The Daily Mail.

Public should be told that rationing is inevitable, say doctors

The public should be warned that rationing of health care is inevitable, doctors said at their annual representatives' meeting in Torquay this week. The doctors also agreed that members of the public should be given explicit advice on which services are available on the NHS so that they can make provision for treatments that fall outside the health service.

Alex Smallwood, from the BMA's Junior Doctors Committee, told the meeting, "Rationing has become a necessary evil. It is no longer possible to provide all the latest treatments without detriment to others. But we need to formalise it.

NHS 'Wastes Billions Of Cancer Cash'

Bureacracy in the NHS is wasting billions of pounds intended to treat cancer patients, it has been claimed.

A report by Doctors for Reform says much of the money has been spent on creating new posts for bureaucrats.

Fighter ace sells medals to spare wife long wait for hip replacement

One of the most decorated British fighter pilots of the Second World War has sold his medals, diaries and other memorabilia partly to pay for a hip replacement operation for his wife who faced at least a six-month wait on the National Health Service.

Sqn Ldr Neville Duke, 83, the Royal Air Force's top-scoring ace in the Mediterranean theatre who set a world air speed record of 728 mph in 1953, put the collection up for auction rather than subject his wife Gwen to months of pain and discomfort while she waited for an operation.

Toothache boy nearly died

A TEENAGER with toothache ended up fighting for life in hospital ? after being turned away by a string of dentists. Peter Owen, 19, was in agony for a week as he tried SIX times to have a tooth out. He was eventually rushed to hospital after an abscess on the tooth swelled so much that it blocked his windpipe.

Baroness Warnock: Dementia sufferers may have a 'duty to die'

Elderly people suffering from dementia should consider ending their lives because they are a burden on the NHS and their families, according to the influential medical ethics expert Baroness Warnock.

Deaths from hospital blunders soar 60% in two years as NHS staff 'abandon quality of care to chase targets'

The number of patients killed by hospital blunders has soared by 60 per cent in just two years, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Official records show that 3,645 died as a result of outbreaks of infections, botched operations and other mistakes in 2007/08. That was up from 2,275 two years before.

Starved to death in an NHS hospital: Damning inquiry highlights case of patient left without food for 26 days

Obnoxio's Manifesto

OTC makes the sensible case for scrapping large chunks of the quangocracy; buried away in the comments is his fuller manifesto, which is pretty much the same as my own:
---------------
First step would be to leave the EU.

Second step would be to repeal every law based on EU directives. We can always re-implement later. Mass repeal of every law introduced by Labour since 1997. (Probably a lot of overlap!)

Third step would be to shit-can every consultancy contract with the government and renegotiate.

Every single drop of government funding for quangoes and charities stopped dead.

Massive tax simplification: flat tax of 25% on everything above £12,000 per annum. Dividends untaxed. Corporate tax abolished*. All duties abolished**. VAT abolished. National Insurance either abolished or replace the current Ponzi scheme with actual insurance.

Sell off the NHS.

Renationalise the trains and resell them in such a way that you don't have oligopolies on routes. Same thing for buses.

Deregulate schools and introduce vouchers.

Introduce citizens income, end ALL welfare programs. Implement program to gradually phase out citizen's income***.

Sack the entire civil service, district and town councils. Review the entire governance requirement.

Go to the market to get us out of the bank ownership business.
---------------
* I'd quibble with this. It would be far better to have a 20% flat tax on all income, personal or corporate, than 25% on personal incomes and 0% on corporate.

** 'Duties' that equate to user charges, such as fuel duties to pay for roads; a modest tax of a few percent on new goods to cover refuse collection costs; or indeed taxes on land values seem like 'good' taxes to me.

*** I'm not sure where this is going. A higher effective income tax-free personal allowance is an important corollary of a Citizen's Income-style welfare system; as nobody can be sure which is preferable, why not give people a choice?

Quangoes of the week

From AOLNews:

Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo will announce the new Alcohol Improvement Programme at the National Alcohol Conference in Nottingham. It is hoped the £6 million* measures will help reduce alcohol-related harm.

They include establishing regional alcohol managers, pulling together local information, and increasing access to specialist treatments. Twenty of the most deprived primary care trusts (PCTs) in the country will share £3 million of the funding...

Another £2.7 million will be spent on regional alcohol managers and £450,000 will go to the National Support Team.

An extra £1 million will fund a new Alcohol Learning Centre.

Via The Fat Bigot, who sumarises thusly: "Perhaps £1million out of the 6 will actually go directly into something that might improve patient care, the rest will be spent generating and circulating paper. What better example do we need of the futility and wastefulness of government-led, top-down management of a service?"

* Maybe they'll fund this from the 10p tax on plastic bags that they are thinking of introducing in Wales? See previous post.

Big Government f***s up, yet again (2)

The new contracts for NHS dentists which our very own government introduced* turn out to be a fraudsters' charter.

* Or indeed imposed, depending on your point of view. I know of nothing that suggests NHS dentists were actually lobbying for such changes, above and beyond the usual "Can we have some more money, please?"

"GPs paid more for working less"

This is hardly news, is it?

Average GP Partners salaries are now £114,000 a year, as against £56,000 in 2001. Adjust that for the fact the average working week is now 36.3 hours, not 43.1, that's equivalent to a payrise of 130%.

The generic headline "Government allows taxpayer to get conned out of billions by rent-seeking monopoly for umpteenth time" would cover it.

"Smoking costs the NHS billions"

The bansturbators are at it again.

FFS, the NHS is a taxpayer funded public body. So what they are really saying is "Smoking costs the taxpayer billions". If that figure of £2.7 billion for the 'cost' of treating smoking-related illnesses is correct*, let's compare it with the taxes that smokers pay;

1. Let's kick off with £9 billion tobacco duties, stick on £1.5 billion for the VAT on top, makes £10.5 billion.

2. We pay for smoking out of our net income, taxable at around 30%, so before we can buy our smokes, we've paid another £4.5 billion in income tax/National Insurance.

3. Add to this the fact that smokers live ten years less than non-smokers, that reduces the number of pensioners by a 15 per cent or so, reducing the cost to the taxpayer by a further £12 billion odd.

Tot that lot up, and you'll find that smokers save other taxpayers about £27 billion per annum. Is it too much to ask that ten per cent of that is spent on treatment?

The much quoted ASH are of course yet another quango - they received a cool £320,400 from the Dept of Health and The Wales Assembly Government (see page 15 of the 2007 accounts), which is more than half their income. And is probably included in the £2.7 billion figure.

* And doesn't get revised up by a factor of four, like they did with alcohol related NHS admissions.

Alan Johnson's speech at the Labour Party Conference

Just caught the umpteenth rerun of this, yadda yadda, blah blah blah, but this stuck in the craw:

In the mid 1990s infection rates rocketed in understaffed and dilapidated hospitals. Last week I announced that NHS staff had succeeded in cutting MRSA infections, not by half as envisaged but by 57% in three years.

Woah! Fact check!

Deaths from MRSA increased from 51 in 1993 to 800 in 2002 (BBC)

Deaths from MRSA increased from 955 in 2003 to 1,168 in 2004 (The Torygraph)

Deaths from MRSA fell slightly from 1,652 in 2006 to 1,593 in 2007 "the first time the number of MRSA-related deaths has fallen since the ONS began keeping records in 1993" (BBC).

So we are still way above the numbers back in 1997, eh lads?

Meanwhile, the number of death certificates mentioning Clostridium difficile increased from under 2,000 in 2003 to over 8,000 in 2007 (BBC).

If you're going to tell Big Fat Lies, don't lie about things that can be disproven by scratting around for twenty minutes on the internet, FFS! Ah well, at least Tractor Production is up, I suppose ...

"More people can choose to die at home"

I overlooked this fine article on a recent pronouncement by Health Secretary Alan Johnson MP (Lab, Kingston upon Hull West and Kessle).

Faced with headlines like these, a more accurate statement would be "More people will choose to take their chances at home".

Waste in the private sector

When you point out how wasteful and inefficient the State sector is, the traditional Leftie retort is "Ah yes, but there is waste and inefficiency in the private sector as well".

To which the counter-retort is "Ah yes, but the consumer doesn't pay for the waste; the consumer only pays what the goods and services are worth. Plus 17.5% VAT where appropriate. For example, 'Waterworld' may have been the most expensive film to make of all time, but the film was not that brilliant that cinemas could charge people double the normal price to see it."

In case that doesn't shut them up, or they ask "Who does pay, then?" or in the unlikely event that they say "Then the poor long-suffering shareholder must bear the cost", then is useful to look at a real life example; the Blu-Ray vs HD DVD 'war'.

Sony and Hitachi spent oodles of money in developing rival formats. If you were a shareholder in Hitachi, then you have paid an element of R&D and lost your money, and if you were a Sony shareholder, the gamble has paid off nicely*. But most sensible shareholders in Japanese electronic giants would own shares in both companies, so the only question is, do the gains (future income from licensing the Blu-Ray patents) exceed the cost of developing both formats? Almost certainly yes. So the shareholders haven't really lost out either.

So yes, superficially there is 'waste' in the private sector, but it doesn't really matter.

In any event, it pales into insignificance when you read about the NHS hospital wards crawling with vermin.

* When you think of the rival formats that Sony has developed and miserably failed to market, for example MiniDisc and ATRAC (instead of MP3) and so on, they had to get lucky sooner or later.

NHS Fuckwittery (10)

Back in May, they came up with some Big Scary Numbers, claiming that 200,000 NHS admissions a year were alcohol-related.

Hmm. Not scary enough, obviously. So they've now revised that up to 800,000 admissions a year.

But despite this, they admit that only "£2billion of NHS money is spent every year treating patients with alcohol-related diseases", which is no higher than the guesstimate in my previous post, which is in turn only 2% of overall NHS cost and a small fraction of alcohol duty revenues. And it's not "NHS money" FFS, it's taxpayers' money.

The most outrageous claim is that "six per cent of all NHS admissions are in some way caused by drink". So what? Seeing as half of us are drunk for a couple of hours a day, I'd say this is pretty much par for the course.

"Amy kept in hospital for further tests"

Stop it! Stop it!

It reminds me of this exchange:

DOUGAL- Father Stone's been in there a long time. Do you think he's dead?
TED- Dougal! No, they're probably just... keeping him in for tests.
DOUGAL- What kind of tests? General Knowledge?
TED- No, medical tests!
DOUGAL- Sure, what would Father Stone know about that?

(pinched from here)

NHS Fuckwittery (10)

From today's Metro:

Around 2,500 under-14s are admitted to hospital each year because of the effects of alcohol... It also emerged that more than 1,500 pupils were expelled in just three years for drug or alcohol-related reasons. The Liberal Democrats, who uncovered the figures, said they were evidence of an "escalating public health crisis".

Wot? I thoroughly agree that under-age drinking is A Bad Thing, but that's hardly an "escalating public health crisis", is it? That 2,500 is barely 1% of all alcohol related admissions, which in turn, only account for about 2% of all NHS-admissions. 2,500 is also barely 0.1% of all 10 to 14 year olds. Hopefully, this experience teaches them a lesson, if not, well ... they are probably beyond redemption.

And why shouldn't schools be allowed to expel pupils for exactly that reason? I am sure that the gains to the hundreds of thousands of pupils whose lessons are no longer disrupted by scum like this far outweighs any other factors.

"Cocaine victim numbers surge"

Shock! Horror!

The number of cocaine users admitted to hospital has more than quadrupled in eight years, it was revealed yesterday ... gasps The Sun breathlessly, ... The worrying statistics point to a dramatic rise in the drug’s popularity over the last decade..

It then continues with some hard facts ...
Cannabis poisonings nearly halved during the same period. Good stuff. Why is that not worthy of a headline?

The Government figures reveal 740 people needed emergency treatment after bingeing on cocaine during 2006/07, compared with 161 in 1998/99. Wot? Out of maybe half a million users, 740 overdoses? I'd guess that the bulk of these relate to crack-cocaine anyway, which is a truly vile drug, not the good old Bolivian marching powder that merely turns you into an arrogant arsehole and makes your nose bleed. Even if this guess is wrong, it's not much of a message is it "Kids! Don't do cocaine! There's a one-in-a-thousand chance you'll overdose if you take it regularly for a year! And going by these stat's, zero chance that you'll die!"

The majority – 629 – were men and their average age was 29. Yeah, so? Cocaine is taken predominatly by relatively wealthy men in their twenties, any fule kno that.

... the number of cannabis users needing treatment fell from 171 to 96 – and heroin overdoses fell from 1,962 to 1,530. Isn't that something to celebrate - out of one or two million cannabis users, only 96 needed treatment? Ditto heroin, with 300,000 users?

Last month the Government revealed drug-related hospital admissions had soared by more than a third since 2002. Many of the 215,447 admissions were for legal drug overdoses or accidental poisoning. So, er, by these figures, illegal drugs caused about 3% as many admissions as legal ones? And even legal drugs only accounted for 2% of all admissions (approx. ten million). Hardly a f***ing epidemic, is it?

H/t EUReferendum, who makes further very interesting points.

NHS Fuckwittery (9)

Shock! Horror!

Under the heading "Hospital alcohol admissions soar" comes this factoid: Alcohol was the main or secondary cause of 207,800 NHS admissions in 2006/7, compared to 93,500 in 1995/96.

Let's crunch those numbers:
1. Total NHS admissions approx. 10 million per annum.
2. Total spending on NHS in 2006-07 = £82 billion.
3. £82 billion ÷ 10 million x 207,800 = £1.7 billion* (assuming that average cost of an 'alcohol related admission' is the same as the average cost of all admissions)
4. Total alcohol duties collected in 2006-07 = £8 billion (from Tab C4), plus 50% for VAT = £12 billion.

So I think this is the usual BBC-Nulab alliance softening us up for yet more bansturbation. Wouldn't a more appropriate headline have been something like "Nulab drives nation to drink"?

* The Institute of Alcohol Studies reported that the cost was £1.7 bn back in 2004 (see page 8 of this), so this looks about right. Yes, there is such an Institute! All I can say is, I have been studying the effects of alcohol very closely for over a quarter of a century, and I am still none the wiser, heck knows what sort of breakthrough they're hoping for.

NHS Fuckwittery (8)

In brief ...In all, 127 [NHS] managers lost their jobs. The average pay-out each is to receive will be just under £120,000.

Look, if those jobs were superfluous, they should never have been 'created' in the first place? Is anybody going to take the rap for that? No? I thought not.

That this sort of practice is rife in Northern Ireland is hardly surprising.

Fun with numbers

Remittance Man has produced a statistical tour de force, concluding that if every woman in the UK stopped drinking it would postpone 1,000 deaths a year.

"Health inequality gap widening"

Nulab are so obsessed with the fact that better-off people's life expectancy is improving faster than that of people in 'deprived areas', that they forgot to give themselves a pat on the back for improving life expectancy by an average of 2 years over the last decade (at enormous cost to the taxpayer, of course).

Oh ... which is a piss-poor result really, seeing as life expectancy increased by an average of 2.7 years every decade over the course of the twentieth century.

Public sector employment & public spending in the UK

In the context of nothing in particular, here's an overview of how things have changed between 1997 and 2007.

Total public spending, is up from 41.2% of GDP to 44.6% of GDP, per the OECD's Economic Outlook, Table 25 (having dipped as low as 37.1% in 2000). GDP seems to be about £1,400 billion, so if spending had remained a constant % of GDP, it would now be £48 bn less. Had it remained at 2000 levels, it would be £105 bn less.

According to this, employment in the public sector (in the narrowest sense) is up from 6.1 million to 7.0 million (column D); but if you chuck in all the para-statals - quangoes, state-funded charities and so on - employment in 'Public administration, health and education' (Column M) it has increased from 6.5 million to 8.3 million.

So what are all these people doing?

The number of nurses and doctors in the NHS has increased by 120,000 (from 400,000 to 520,000). Spending on the NHS in nominal terms has trebled.

The number of teachers in English schools has increased by 36,000, from just under 500,000 to about 530,000, call it 600,000 for the whole of the UK. Nominal spending on education has doubled.

The number of police officers has increased from 126,000 to 140,000.

That means that out of those 8.3 million, there are 1.26 million nurses, teachers, doctors and police officers. To be fair, they need back up staff (cleaners, receptionists, classroom assistants etc) let's be generous and double that to 2.5 million, stick on another 500,000 for DVLA, court system, armed forces, a few people to run dramatically reduced and simplified tax/welfare system, issuing passports and so on, so 3 million seems a reasonable upper figure for public sector (about 10% of all employees). Not that the State should employ teachers and medical staff of course, but AFAIAC the taxpayer should still bear the cost of basic level health and education vouchers to be used in private sector, so the cost would be much the same.

So what on earth do the other 5.3 million other people in 'Public administration, health and education' do all day long? Presumably bugger all. So let's sack the lot

Total government spending is currently about £625 billion. If you knock off £165 bn for child benefit, welfare and pensions, that's £460 bn on salaries and overheads. As a check - 8.3 million employees x average salary £25,000= £210 bn, plus 50% for public sector pension accruals plus 50% for overheads (buildings rent and maintenance and other jollies) = £420 bn, plus £40 bn wasted on PFI, EU membership and so on, seems about right.

So if you sack 5.3 million of them, that would cut public spending by 5.3/8.3 x £460 bn = £290 bn. Giving them all a flat rate Citizen's income of £60 per week would reduce the saving to £275 bn. About £50 bn of current spending is being funded by borrowing, so to balance the books we could still cut taxes by £225 bn.

So in theory you scrap VAT (£77 bn), National Insurance (£87 bn) and reduce income tax and corporation tax (£144 bn + £45 bn) to a flat 20% or so (see Table C4) without even having to worry about Laffer effects.

That's what I call a libertarian budget!

"Average NHS wait up under Labour"

Lots of fun-with-numbers on the statistics that show average waiting times in NHS are up marginally over the last ten years, from 41 days to 49.

What I like best is where Ben Bradshaw MP (Lab, Exeter) abandons all hope of doing the mental arithmetic to somehow prove that average waiting times are shorter and goes for a couple of bare-faced lies instead:

"Under the Tories is was not uncommon to wait 18 months or more for an operation. Tackling long waits leads to a short-term increase in the average wait as the backlog is cleared - this can be seen in the data."

Er ... so ten years later is a 'short-term increase', is it? Is he admitting that they haven't cleared the backlog after ten years? Are there people who have been on a waiting list since 1997?

Let's not forget that the nominal cost of the NHS has nearly trebled from £34.7 bn in 1997-98 to £94.3 bn in 2007-08 (planned - see page 7)

Ann Cryer MP (Lab, Keighley)

Prompted by Verity over at DK's, I have uncovered some fascinating statistics.

Another Labour MP making evidence-based-policy! Whatever next?

She doesn't always get it right though - she called for immigrants to be forced to learn English a few years ago, which is bollocks of course. Once people are here they are here, you can't deport them for failing a language test. The cheaper and better solution would be to grant residence permits only to people who can already speak reasonably good English when they apply.

* Update - a subsequent post at Vindico's has set me thinking - would such a ban be in the slightest enforceable? Hmmm...

Dave don't got no clue (3)

Apparently, Dave The Chameleon wants 'the Tories to become the party of the NHS'; has 'axed his party's previous proposal to subsidise patients to go private'; as well as calling for fines on hospitals who allow patients to become infected.

Pop quiz, which bits of this rhetoric did Blulab nick off Nulab and which ones did Nulab nick off Blulab? I don't know any more. And I don't care any more either.

FFS, there is no point fining a publicly funded body, yet another reason for having non-state owned competing providers (combined with taxpayer funded vouchers AFAIAC); only then would fines have any effect whatsoever. To the extent that fines are necessary - competing providers would not only lose business if they were to infect their patients, but would also face legal actions and higher insurance bills.