Patient takes his own life after NHS blunders made him 'afraid to live'

This beggars belief.

Paul Steane took his own life at 45 because he could no longer endure the punishment that the NHS had inflicted on him.

But Paul Steane did commit suicide. He didn't do it because he wanted to die. He did it, terrifyingly, because he was afraid to live.

''That was how the NHS had left him,'' [his wife] says wearily. ''Terrified of life. He didn't kill himself because he was depressed at his condition, but because he was frightened of what else they could do to him if he had to go back to hospital.

''His legs had been amputated. He was blind. His vocal cords were so damaged that he could no longer speak. His breathing was laboured and painful. And his hands were so painful that he was petrified he would choke to death if the tube in his throat became blocked and he couldn't pull it out.

"But most of all he was utterly terrified he would have to go back into hospital."

Nuneaton hospital, who have the worst mortality statistics in the UK, 43% above the still unacceptable 'expected' rate, were responsible.

As a result of poor nursing care, a hitherto healthy man became one of the 59,000 people in this country who are permanently disabled or die each year because of poor hygiene or care in our hospitals. And in Paul's case, all because he was denied the most basic of human needs: a drink of water.

The letters his wife received from nurses are telling.

The letters, many from tearful nurses, highlight the lack of attention given to basic nursing care and hygiene during training. "It has made me determined to ensure that I give my patients the best of basic nursing care,'' one wrote, ''and it has made me recognise the importance of not becoming bogged down in tasks but in making sure they are eating and drinking.'' Another wrote of how ''too many in the profession are so concerned with budgets and targets that they forget something simple like ensuring someone has a glass of water.''

Paul's death was in 2003, so one would think that lessons had been learned by 2009.

The number of people working for the NHS is at an all-time high, driven by a rise in managers which outstripped the recruitment of nurses by four to one.

Plus ca change ...

Source: Daily Telegraph

Patient unlawfully killed by insulin OD

A diabetic pensioner who died after being injected with 10 times too much insulin by a newly-qualified nurse was unlawfully killed, a coroner ruled today.

Community nurse Joanne Evans was not present at Cardiff Coroners' Court to hear the verdict in relation to the death of 85-year-old Margaret Thomas from Pontypool, South Wales. Cardiff coroner Mary Hassell said it was with a heavy heart she returned her verdict but Ms Evans' actions had been "more than cavalier".

The coroner also criticised Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust for which Ms Evans had been working at the time.

Source: The Metro

Bosses get 7.6%; nurses get 1.9%

NHS bosses were handed pay rises of more than seven per cent last year – four times as much as nurses and other health staff.

Chief executives of trusts running the best- performing hospitals saw their salaries go up by an average of 7.6 per cent to £158,000 a year, according to newly released figures. Their increase compares with those for front-line health workers and nurses, who were handed less than two per cent – well below the 3.2 per cent rate of inflation...

Source: The Metro

'My ignored report could have stopped deaths at hospital'

A damning report that may have prevented the deaths of several mothers at a London maternity department was covered up, it was claimed today.

The doctor who was sent to investigate Northwick Park hospital said he warned health bosses of serious failings but was ignored. Two years later the hospital was engulfed in scandal after it emerged 10 mothers had died in childbirth there over four years. Dr Howard Baderman, former consultant in A&E medicine at University College London Hospital, spoke out after appalling conditions at a hospital in Stafford were revealed last week...

Dr Baderman, 73, said: "I was astonished when the Secretary of State said he could not understand why the situation had not been picked up earlier. From my experience this is not an isolated case." The Department of Health sent Dr Baderman and a team of other doctors to Northwick Park in 2003 to investigate claims that A&E waiting-time figures had been falsified, he said.

He wrote a highly critical report about the hospital and its senior management. But the report was rewritten so extensively by the Department of Health that Dr Baderman made them remove his name from it. It later emerged that 10 new mothers died after blunders in the maternity department between 2002 and 2005...

Source: The Evening Standard

13 die in superbug crisis at NHS district hospital

Thirteen people have died in a superbug outbreak at an NHS hospital, it has emerged.

Another 17 patients are being treated in a special isolation ward while non-infected patients have had to be moved to other hospitals up to 50km (30 miles) away. More staff have been taken on to cope with the crisis at Eastbourne District General Hospital and the trust's chief executive has even offered to do nursing shifts...

The hospital revealed there had been 62 cases of C.diff this year – 30 in February alone. This is much more than the target rate of 19 a month and was blamed on a high number of patients being admitted with respiratory infections...

Wot? They have a target of 'only' 19 cases per month?

Source: The Metro

Lawyers use NHS as £100m cash cow

LAWYERS are earning £800 an hour from the National Health Service and taking “indefensible” fees of tens of millions of pounds in legal disputes. The money is coming from a government scheme intended to compensate patients for medical blunders and inadequate care, an investigation has found.

The compensation lawyers are claiming costs and “success fees” worth about £100m a year out of the scheme. In some cases the payouts claimed are 10 times more than the damages won by the patient.

In one case involving Barking, Havering & Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust, a legal firm claimed nearly £78,000 in costs and fees, having won just £7,000 for a female patient. A Liverpool firm submitted a legal bill for £4.4m for a single case.

Just a thought, but if our money was being used to pay for more doctors and nurses, and less on highly-paid morons hectoring on irrelevant nonsense, wouldn't the legal bill be a lot smaller?

Source: The Times

Children's hospital failings exposed

A damning report into Birmingham Children's Hospital has revealed a catalogue of serious failings.

Patients experienced sub-standard care, delays in treatment and youngsters being redirected to other services, says the Healthcare Commission. The probe also found some complex neurosurgery had been carried out without the relevant trained nurses.

The BCH NHS Foundation Trust was also criticised for its shortage of beds, equipment and access to operating theatres, and an "ineffective" partnership with the University Hospital Birmingham (UBH).

The Commission's report was ordered by Health Secretary Alan Johnson after concerns raised by consultants appeared in the Observer newspaper in November...

Sarah-Jane Marsh, BCH interim chief executive, said: "The quality of care for our young patients is our top priority. In some ways, we have been victims of our own success - as our services have grown ever more popular we have been faced with the challenge of meeting that demand and have been carrying out a great deal of work to make sure we do."

Source: The Metro.

Another Death Service Hospital

A son who thought his mother was recovering in hospital was told by a doctor "she has come here to die", an inquest has heard.

Inquests are being held at Portsmouth Coroner's Court into the deaths of 10 patients at the Gosport War Memorial Hospital (GWMH) more than 10 years ago.

Elsie Lavender, 84, was transferred to the hospital after suffering a stroke.

Her son Alan thought she was recovering well but when she got to GWMH she rapidly deteriorated, jurors heard.

Hampshire police have carried out a series of investigations into the treatment of patients at the Hampshire hospital in the late 1990s but no prosecutions have ever been brought by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Some of their families believe that sedatives such as diamorphine were over-prescribed at the hospital and led to the death of their relatives who were receiving recuperative care.

In a twist on "Name that Party" The BBC forgets to mention the name of the organisation that runs the hospital.

Failing hospital 'caused deaths'

A hospital's "appalling" emergency care resulted in patients dying needlessly, the NHS watchdog has said.

About 400 more people died at Mid Staffordshire Hospital between 2005 and 2008 than would be expected, the Healthcare Commission said. It said there were deficiencies at "virtually every stage" of emergency care and said managers pursued targets at the detriment of patient care.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson has launched an inquiry.

The trust's chairman Toni Brisby and chief executive Martin Yeates resigned earlier this month. Mid Staffordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said at the time that they had stepped down "to enable the trust to build on the considerable improvements that have been made over the past 18 months".

Another enquiry? That'll fix it.

Source: BBC

GPs failed to spot teen's cancer

A teenager died from cancer after his symptoms were wrongly put down to anxiety, an inquest has heard.

Christopher Chaffey, 19, from Hull, died in September 20 after developing a tumour in his chest that weighed nearly 5lb (2kg)The growth was not spotted despite him contacting his GP's surgery numerous times and once being rushed to hospital with chest pains.

Mr Chaffey's parents, Patricia and Paul, say they now intend to take civil action following the inquest at Hull Coroner's Court. The court heard how Mr Chaffey had blood tests in July 2007 which showed abnormalities and further tests in May 2008, which revealed his haemoglobin levels had fallen.

The symptom was put down to anaemia and other complaints, including fainting, a persistent cough and a blue chest with veins that looked "like a road map", were put down to anxiety by a GP.

Professor Barry Hancock, an independent medical expert, told the court anaemia was "unusual in a young lad" and he would have expected further tests to be carried out, which might have helped spot the cancer.

Source: ITN News

'Botched op' mum will sue hospital

A mother who claims she almost died when a doctor left a swab inside her is seeking hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation.

Angela Watson, who needed 28 operations to fix the alleged botched surgery, said she suffered multiple organ failure as a result of the hospital's negligence. The ordeal left her disabled, emotionally scarred and unable to have children, a court writ added.

Source: The Metro.

Hospital injection errors 'common'

Doctors and nurses make frequent mistakes when injecting patients in intensive care, according to research. A study found medication errors relating to injections are "common and a serious safety problem in intensive care units" around the world. Researchers analysed data from 113 intensive care wards in 27 countries, and over one 24-hour period 861 medication mistakes affecting 441 patients were reported...

Seven patients experienced permanent harm as a result of the errors while five died as a direct result.

Source: The Metro

Newborn baby 'had to be resuscitated after midwife left mother alone in birthing pool'

A newborn baby had to be resuscitated after a bungling midwife left the mother in a birthing pool during advanced labour, a misconduct hearing was told today. Midwife Lourde Backhurst waited for up to 15 minutes after the baby's head appeared before summoning help - and by then it was blue, it is alleged.

Clare Strickland, for the NMC, said a senior midwife at the hospital's birthing pool had to tell Backhurst that a baby's head had turned blue in October 2006. Ms Strickland said the mother, referred to as 'Ms C', was in advanced labour and the baby's head was clearly visible under the water but Backhurst waited for up to 15 minutes before calling for help. By that time the tot's shoulder had got stuck and its head was 'a purple and blue colour', the NMC heard.

Awful, yes. But what is staggering about this story is why she was allowed to supervise any birth at all in October 2006.

In December 2005, Backhurst left student midwife Kelly McMillan to deliver a baby while she went on her break, the panel heard. She then allowed the student to untangle the umbilical cord from the baby's neck and only stepped in when the mother swore at the midwife to help.

Then ...

In June 2006, Backhurst allegedly ignored signs that a birth was imminent and left a mother who had soiled herself. By the time the midwife returned, a supervisor was helping to deliver the baby and lift it clear of its mother's bodily waste, the Council heard.

How many cock-ups does it take before a NHS administrator rubs their chin, and thinks, you know what? I don't think she's very good at this job.

Backhurst, of Bedford, is not attending but denies misconduct.

Beg pardon?

Source: The Times Online

Patient risk over NHS transfers

Patients are being put at risk by inadequate hospital transfer arrangements, anaesthetists say.

A combination of NHS and private ambulances are responsible for ferrying people around sites in the UK. But the Association of Anaesthetists said the vehicles were poorly equipped and called for a national transfer service to be established...

Dr David Goldhill, the chairman of the working group which drew up the report, said it was an issue that needed to be taken more seriously. "There is no doubt that the situation we have at the moment in most areas is entirely unsatisfactory. The patients are in a vulnerable position."

Source: BBC

Plan to develop 'more personal' NHS

Blah, blah, blah...

An inquiry into the future role of nurses and midwives will make the NHS "more personal to the needs of patients", Gordon Brown said.

The Prime Minister and Health Secretary Alan Johnson unveiled plans for a Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery during a visit to King's College Hospital in Camberwell, south London.

Announcing the plan to work out how nurses can further improve patient safety and champion high-quality care, Mr Brown added: "We are transforming the health service for the future. The health service is a public service but it also a service that is personal to the needs of the patient."

Source: The Metro

Two deaths per day caused by blunders in London NHS hospitals

A parochial view of the NHS 'blunder' snapshot.

Hundreds of patients are dying in London hospitals because of treatment blunders.

Figures published for the first time today reveal the extent of medication overdoses and other mistakes in the NHS.

The Government's safety watchdog, the National Patient Safety Agency, found that 365 deaths occurred in the capital's hospitals and care centres in six months last year. They include those blamed on faulty equipment, incorrect diagnoses, and nurses giving patients overdoses of sedatives.

365 in six months? Not much need to reach for the calculator here, it's two unnecessary deaths every day.

More ammo for when my GP starts hectoring.

Source: Evening Standard

H/T Witzend via e-mail

Quarter of people with new C diff have died

Remember this, as posted here in February?

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

Well, it seems that there is no 'potentially' about it anymore.

ONE in four patients in Scotland who contracted a recently discovered strain of Clostridium difficile has died, figures revealed last night.

You may also remember that Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon came out with this gem at the time.

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

I remember asking at the time if anyone felt confident. Well, do ya', punks?

Source: The Scotsman

NHS Records: Proof the State still thinks it owns you body and soul

As you know, the Trojan Horse known as The Coroners and Justice Bill, aims to hoover up all information about us so that it can be used on fishing expeditions, seeking out people who have to then prove their innocence for crimes nobody reported and to sell off to the highest bidder for private gain.

Now, Doctors are right to complain that such disclosure is highly likely to make patients withhold vital information in consultation rooms for fear that it will eventually be used against them by people who have no context and no expertise to make any judgements whatsoever. Plenty of "authority", mind.

Imagine someone even TALKING to their GP about mental health, for example? That could render them unemployable. People will just clam up, with all manner of consequences. For the State this is but a mere bagatelle when compared to all that lovely information and the warm feeling they get knowing that the entire population realise that every word they say could come back to bite them in future at the whim of a bureaucrat.

Source: LUPK 'blog.

NHS 'frontline care' learning report

Treatment of wounded British troops on the frontline is so good that NHS accident and emergency departments in the UK should learn from it, a report has said.

But away from war zones too many of Britain's military healthcare services fail to comply with standards for hygiene, child protection and patient safety, the Healthcare Commission found.

Inspectors raised concerns about "unacceptable" conditions at some armed forces' medical centres in the UK and overseas, including poor maintenance, dirty facilities and lack of privacy.

"Child protection"?

Source: The Metro

Flu spread by unvaccinated NHS frontline staff

Health workers have been blamed for putting vulnerable patients at risk and worsening the winter’s flu outbreak by refusing to have flu jabs.

Fewer than one in seven frontline NHS staff had a flu jab last year, The Times has learnt, despite a recommendation that they do so. The Royal College of General Practitioners called last night for hospital doctors, GPs, nurses, carers and other staff to have compulsory jabs or be banned from contact with patients other than in exceptional circumstances.

Figures to be published next week by the Department of Health will show that the vast majority of health professionals ignored government advice that everyone in direct contact with patients be immunised.

Of the hundreds of patients seriously affected by staff transmission of flu, some were infected while being treated in high-dependency wards...

It strikes me that either 'flu jabs are a good idea or they aren't. If they are, then surely NHS staff should be following their own guidelines. If they aren't - as evidenced by the fact that NHS staff don't believe in them - then why does it peddle them, spend a fortune on vaccines* and expect the rest of us to have ourselves immunised?

Source: The Times

* Oh, I see ...

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.