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)
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