I'm reprinting an article from September 2013. As you can see, it wasn't the first time that I'd warned about the scandal at Bart's Health Trust.
It's quite simple; I looked at the extraordinary number of 'never happen' events that were taking place at the trust.
It's not the only measure of what's going wrong at a hospital. It's just one of many.
Two years down the line and Bart's Health trust has been taken into special measures.
It's about time....time for managers and senior health professionals at the trust to resign. We'll see if that happens.
Meanwhile you read it here first, two years ago;
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
More questions about Barts health NHS Trust.
O.K.
I’m getting seriously worried about Bart’s Health NHS Trust which is in fact a large grouping of East End Hospitals, swallowed up by inappropriate mergers over the years. This is what I wrote in May of this year after I analysed the ‘Bottom 21’ Trusts for ‘Never Events’, things that should never happen because they are completely preventable:
My own ‘Lantern Rouge’ (that’s the Tour de France prize for finishing last) is because I’ve picked out the two separate entries for ‘Bart’s’;
Bart’s& The London NHS Trust 8
Retained foreign object post-operation 4
Wrong site surgery 2
Misplaced naso-or oro-gastric tubes 2
Bart’s Health NHS Trust 11
Retained foreign object post-operation 4
Wrong site surgery 3
Misplaced naso-or oro-gastric tubes 2
Wrong implant/prosthesis 1
Air Embolism 1
and I did so because Barts Health was formed on 1 April 2012 by the merger of Barts and the London NHS Trust, Newham University Hospital NHS Trust and Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS Trust.
For starters that means that St Bartholomew’s may have had its figures split in two and actually had 19 ‘never happen’ incidents over that four year period which is seriously worrying. Even more worrying is that the newly combined Trust – the four hospitals together- seems to have had 11 incidents in just under a year (2012/13).
If you want to get really frightened, add up the number of incidents over the four hospitals for those four years – it’s a total of 27. Or is there duplication in these figures? Have they tried to separate the new from the old, producing double counting? I hope so – mind you where the NHS is concerned the problem is usually undercounting problems.
Either way, it’s not what I would call a centre of excellence.
So if Barts it isn’t being investigated right now, it’s time it was.”
I didn’t believe my eyes, so I left it as a question.
Then I got my answer in The London Standard two months later:
“An inquiry was ordered today at Britain’s biggest health trust in response to the deaths of 28 patients due to medical blunders last year.
Barts health trust — which runs six London hospitals — was declared at “high risk” of failing patients, with major concerns about delays in cancer care and hundreds of emergency cases readmitted for further treatment.
The inquiry was ordered by England’s new Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Professor Sir Mike Richards, in his first day in the job. It comes after Barts last night said it was calling in financial trouble-shooters to address a £93 million debt.
Sir Mike was alerted by whistle-blowers, patient complaints and key measures indicating the performance at Barts was markedly worse than the national average. This included 10 “never events” — things that should never happen in surgery — involving seven cases where swabs were left inside patients, two cases where the wrong teeth were removed and one where the wrong eye implant was inserted.
Barts also admitted 348 serious incidents in 2012/13, including 129 at The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and 105 at Whipps Cross in Leytonstone. Of these, 28 resulted in death.”
Now I am really concerned. Yesterday I posted the Freedom of Information responses from 101 NHS Trusts – replies to requests for Information made by the BBC News team about the number of unfilled vacancies at Accident and Emergency departments.
I went back to the figures to find out what has been going on down at Bart’s Health NHS Trust and the answer is……nothing…..nadda….nowt…zilch.
They didn’t provide the information.
So, of course, the only explanation is that the management, after failing to sort out its fairly serious problems has responded by hiding the result of the problems under the carpet. Given the extent of their troubles it would be no surprise to discover that staff are leaving and aren’t replaced and we have a right to know.
Its bad when there are problems, it’s much worse when you cover them up.
What else are they hiding?
Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
No comments:
Post a Comment