Introduction: Postcode Lottery

The purpose of this website is to help raise awareness of the plight of people who are victims of the Postcode Lottery.

My own story of a near-death experience of the postcode lottery can be found here.

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On 29th June, 2008, Gordon Brown promised to end the NHS Postcode Lottery.

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How obscene that NHS bosses get rich as patients needlessly die on their watch

The crisis over standards of NHS care appears to be worsening almost by the day.

Figures published in the latest Hospital Guide from the part-NHS, part-private Dr Foster organisation show that 12 hospital trusts including those with 'foundation' status are 'significantly underperforming' - including nine which had been rated good or even excellent by the NHS watchdog, the Care Quality Commission.

A further 27 are said by Dr Foster to have had unusually high mortality rates, generally considered a warning sign of care or treatment inadequacies.

True, comparative statistics like these are a minefield, and using death rates as a marker of performance can be misleading. But only a few days ago, horrific conditions were revealed at Basildon NHS Trust - which Dr Foster states has the worst mortality rates in the country.

Care Quality Commission inspectors found blood-spattered walls and filthy conditions with brown running water, mouldy bathrooms and soiled furniture and commodes.

It is hardly surprising that more and more people are beginning to fear that, far from curing their diseases, a stay in an NHS hospital might actually kill them.


Full article in Daily Mail

Patients are paying the ultimate price for NHS targets

By Daily Mail Comment
Last updated at 9:08 PM on 27th November 2009

In the rush to clear themselves of blame for the needless deaths of more than 70 patients on the filthy, blood-splattered wards of Basildon Hospital, ministers insisted the scandal was an 'isolated case'.

Never mind the fact the Government's own Care Quality Commission inspectors had rated this supposedly elite foundation hospital as good, and awarded it 13 out of 14 for cleanliness.

Of course, it wasn't long before another 'isolated case' came along at Colchester Hospital University Foundation Trust, where the chairman was sacked for presiding over an equally alarming death rate and excessive waiting times in A&E.

Now, shockingly, it emerges that, across the NHS, there are 26 hospitals with higher than expected death rates, in which 3,000 patients may have suffered unnecessary deaths.

The sheer scale of human misery at the hands of an NHS which devours £2billion a week is deeply depressing.

Let's be clear: the Mail has huge admiration for the self-sacrificing dedication of many NHS staff.

But the hands of these professionals have been tied by a Government target and inspection regime which is stultifying individual responsibility.

Too often patients come a sorry second to Whitehall targets. And, as it emerged this week, too often hospitals are only cleaned on the handful of days when inspectors are due.

Doctors, nurses and cleaners work not as one, but as isolated, box-ticking units fulfilling ever more regulatory demands.

The dead hand of central Government control is ruining the NHS. And the patients are paying with their lives.

Payout over veteran neglect death

The family of a Leeds war veteran who died from horrific bed sores after a series of care failings have been paid £20,000 by a hospital trust.

Kenneth Ballinger, 86, was admitted to Leeds General Infirmary after a fall but died from multiple infected bed sores - one the size of a fist.

His daughter said she was haunted by her father's screams of agony.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said mistakes were made and an out-of-court settlement was made with the family.

Mr Ballinger, a veteran of the World War II Normandy landings, was admitted to hospital in January 2006 after a fall at his home in Beeston.

He became infected with a superbug and later developed bed sores so severe that his left hip bone became exposed and he was left with no skin on his heels.

He was discharged but died five months later after the bed sores became infected and he was admitted to Pontefract General Infirmary.

His daughter Carol-Ann Knott said: "I'll be forever haunted by his screams as my father was brought up in the lift at Pontefract General Infirmary.

"The doctors were so appalled that he had been allowed to get in such a state, with a sore so big one of them could fit his fist into the open wound.

"He said that he had never seen anything like it in his life."

Full story can be read on BBC website

'The NHS must stop killing dementia patients with drugs'

Friday, November 13, 2009

A government commissioned report has highlighted the practice of giving people with dementia antipsychotic drugs as a form of chemical restraint and says it is responsible for around 1,800 deaths a year

Up to two thirds of people with dementia who are given antipsychotic drugs as a form of chemical restraint don't need them, a new report has said. The practice of giving dementia sufferers drugs that are licensed to tackle schizophrenia is said to be "scandalous" and lead to around 1,800 deaths a year.

Campaigners have called for such over prescription of drugs to end and the Department of Health's plan is for prescriptions to be cut by two thirds in three years. This action follows an independent review by King's College London Professor Sube Banerjee which was commissioned by the Department of Health and showed that too many people with dementia were routinely prescribed antipsychotic drugs to treat aggression and agitation. This flies in the face of guidance from the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

The plan to tighten procedures up on drugs for people with dementia includes creating a new national clinical director for dementia, offering people with dementia and their carers access to psychological therapies to tackle the root cause of agitation and aggression, an audit to agree on definitive prescribing figures and clear local targets to cut antipsychotics use as a result of the audit.

There are also proposals for better regulation, closer collaboration with the General Medical Council (GMC) and royal colleges to make sure all health and social care staff have specialist training in dementia, and joint Department of Health /Alzheimer's Society guidance on what to do if a family member is given antipsychotics.

However, antipsychotics drugs are deemed by the medical profession to be appropriate for people with dementia in certain circumstances, such as when a person is a risk to themselves or others and where all other methods have been tried. But they should only be given them for a short time of say three months while a care plan is put in place, the report said. Banerjee estimated that about 36,000 of the 180,000 patients with dementia who are given these drugs get some benefit from them.

Care services minister Phil Hope commented: "It is unacceptable that antipsychotic drugs are routinely prescribed to people with dementia. More than half of people with dementia will experience agitation or aggression at some point, but NICE guidance is clear – antipsychotics should only be given when this is really necessary.

"Excellent examples of practice do exist, but our action plan will help make sure this is the norm, not the exception. Our new clinical director will provide strong leadership, supporting the NHS and social care to reduce antipsychotics use carefully and drive up quality."

He added: "We know there are situation where antipsychotic drug use is necessary – we're not calling for a ban, but we do want to see a significant reduction in use. We expect the findings and recommendations [of this report] to be taken into account by PCTs [Primary Care Trusts] and all other relevant organisations. Tackling the root of the problem is vital, which is why we are improving access to psychological therapies. We are also working with the Royal Colleges to ensure all health and social care professionals are able to care for people with dementia without routinely resorting to these drugs."

Banerjee said: "Antipsychotics are used too often in dementia; up to two thirds of the estimated 180,000 people with dementia receiving these are prescribed them unnecessarily. This review identifies the potential risks and benefits of these medications in dementia and presents actions that we can take to address this problem. In doing so we would provide international leadership in this complex clinical area as well as improving the quality of life and quality of care for people with dementia and their carers in England."

Neil Hunt, the chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society, called the report "long awaited" and welcome because it finally brought out into the open the scale of the problem within the NHS.

"The scandalous over prescription of antipsychotic drugs leads to an estimated 1,800 deaths a year," he said. "It must end."

Stressing that the government's action plan could not afford to fail, he went on: "Change will only be achieved with commitment from government, PCTs and health professionals and clear local targets. Today must mark a change in dementia care."

There are currently 700,000 people in the UK with dementia and this is expected to increase to a million in the next 10 years as the proportion of elderly people in the population rises.
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Source: publicservice.co.uk

Fears over child protection at one third of NHS trusts

More than 140 NHS trusts have been challenged over the adequacy of their child protection procedures by the Care Quality Commission in the wake of the Baby Peter scandal.

By Andrew Gilligan

Trusts are responsible for declaring whether they meet basic standards for child protection as part of the health service's annual inspection process.

This year, 363 of England's 392 trusts - over 90 per cent - declared that they met the standard.

But in a special review commissioned after Baby Peter's murder, the watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), has challenged the claims made by 112 trusts. Eighteen of them - including the main GP service in Manchester - have already been marked down by the watchdog, with other investigations "ongoing."

Internal NHS documents seen by The Sunday Telegraph show the CQC review uncovered "significant lapses" in child protection that "trust boards should have been aware of, but did not take into consideration when making [their] declarations."

The documents say that the CQC review has uncovered "clear evidence" which "conflicts with the 2008/9 declarations made by trusts."

In addition to the 112 trusts whose claims have been questioned, a further 29 trusts admitted that they fell below the standard. They include hospitals, mental health trusts and primary care trusts, which run GP services and health centres.

Cynthia Bower, chief executive of the Care Quality Commission, said: "We make no apologies for coming down hard on trusts not meeting the standard on safeguarding children. Baby Peter was a wake-up call for the NHS. Some trusts have realised they've got more to do than they previously thought. In other cases we needed to bring shortfalls to their attention."

Baby Peter, now named as Peter Connolly, died of multiple injuries in August 2007. He was a patient at a child abuse clinic at St Ann's Hospital, Haringey, north London, and had been seen eight times by NHS staff in the month before his death.

At his last visit to the clinic, two days before he died, the paediatrician examining him sent him home after failing to notice that he had a broken back. The 17-month-old was found dead in his blood-stained cot with eight broken ribs, severe lacerations to his head, a tip of a finger missing, broken teeth, missing nails, and scores of bruises, cuts and abrasions, including a deep tear to his left earlobe, which had been pulled away from his head.

Full article in the Telegraph

'3,000 a year die’ in cancer shambles

THREE thousand Britons a year die because of a lack of lung cancer treatment, it emerged yesterday.

Vital areas of care are "woefully inadequate" and there are shortages of key surgical staff, according to new research.

A review has revealed a shambolic postcode lottery where treatment varies from one part of Britain to another.

In some areas, fewer than one in TEN patients get any kind of treatment at all and there are "huge variations and vast inequalities" in others, the UK Lung Cancer Coalition reported after a review of services.

There are only 44 thoracic surgeons - specialists in chest problems including lung conditions - spread thinly over 240 cancer teams.

The NHS is failing to fast-track thousands of patients to consultants every year or prescribe them life-prolonging drugs.

And a third of people stricken by lung cancer never have biopsies carried out.

Dr Mick Peake, head of the UKLCC's clinical advisory group, said: "Alarmingly, patients who are fit for surgery are being turned down.

"We are calling for a 70 per cent active treatment rate across the board, which would mean a massive reduction in the number of deaths. Up to 3,000 lives could potentially be saved each year."

Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in the UK with around 39,000 diagnosed each year.

The UKLCC's chairman Dame Gill Oliver said: "We are still letting down lung cancer patients."
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Source: The Sun

NHS is paying millions to gag whistleblowers

Patients' lives put at risk by tactics used against those who highlight safety fears

By Nina Lakhani

Sunday, 1 November 2009

NHS whistleblowers are routinely gagged in order to cover up dangerous and even dishonest practices that could attract bad publicity and damage a hospital's reputation.

Some local NHS bodies are spending millions of taxpayers' money to pay off and silence whistleblowers with "super gags" to stop them going public with patient safety incidents. Experts warn that patients' lives are being endangered by the use of intimidatory tactics to force out whistleblowers and deter other professionals from coming forward.

The IoS has learnt of children in Stoke-on-Trent needlessly losing organs after safety issues highlighted by a senior surgeon – who was suspended after coming forward to voice concerns – were ignored. In one of more than 20 serious incidents, a newborn baby girl needed an ovary removed after a standard procedure to remove a cyst was delayed because of staff shortages.

According to Public Concern at Work (PCaW), two-thirds of doctors, nurses and other careworkers are accepting non-disclosure clauses built into severance agreements, in order to avoid years of suspension, financial ruin, incriminations and distress before a case reaches court. The details of these claims, including allegations of dangerous practice, dishonesty and misconduct, are never disclosed to the public.

However, judges are also failing the public by agreeing to NHS gagging orders when presiding over whistleblower cases in court. Such orders leave future patients exposed to poor practice, while past ones remain unaware that they may have been a victim, says Dr Peter Wilmshurst, consultant cardiologist at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

This evidence of widespread gagging comes amid government insistence that whistleblowers are fully protected under the 1998 Public Interest Disclosure Act, which made it illegal for NHS trusts and other public bodies to include confidentiality clauses preventing the disclosure of information that is in the public interest.

Dr Richard Taylor, Independent MP for Wyre Forest and a member of the Health Select Committee which condemned the lack of support for whistleblowers in its recent patient safety inquiry, will this week call for an adjournment debate on the issue. Two "terrified" local doctors have recently approached Dr Taylor after their concerns about patient safety in the out-of-hours GP service were not taken seriously.

Francesca West, a policy officer at PCaW, which provides legal advice to whistleblowers, said: "Bad employers are using super gags to hush up problems rather than sort them out, and many people feel scared and pushed into accepting these terms. That's why we are pushing for these settlement claims to be made public so we can identify problems and hold employers accountable. But why are judges allowing gagging orders through their courts anyway?"

The introduction of the 1998 Act was hailed as a huge step forward. Yet whistleblowers still risk facing "trumped up" allegations of misconduct, improper behaviour or mental illness if they feel compelled to voice concern. Margaret Haywood, for example, a nurse who filmed undercover to expose shocking care of elderly patients in Sussex, was struck off for breaching patient confidentiality, even though no patient or relative complained. She was reinstated by the High Court last month after widespread public outrage at her dismissal.

According to Peter Gooderham, lecturer in law and bioethics at the University of Manchester Law School, there are too many legal hurdles to jump over for a whistleblower to ensure their full protection. "The legal protection for whistleblowers does not work. The NHS is littered with whistleblowers whose lives have been damaged or destroyed. For protection, the whistleblower must have a reasonable belief in their accuracy, and the disclosure must be made in good faith. A whistleblower may not understand what 'reasonable belief' and 'good faith' mean, and indeed may not wish to run the risk that a court or tribunal might find against them on these points. I question whether these legal hurdles are necessary where patient care is threatened. A lot of tactics used are too subtle for the law; threats and bullying work for trusts, so they continue to be used."

The British Medical Association has opened 15 new whistleblowing cases in the past three months, and more than 200 doctors have rung its helpline since July 2009. Around a third of 1,700 Public Interest Disclosure Act claims each year involve workers in health and social care, many of which take years to resolve.

According to Dr Wilmshurst, one doctor was recently vindicated by a court, five years after raising the alarm about the misconduct of a more senior colleague. The trust agreed to pay compensation and the five years of lost salary on condition the doctor agreed to a gagging clause. The doctor, now broke, exhausted, career in tatters, had no option but to accept the terms, even though it means the public will never find out what happened.

In another case, the IoS has learnt of more than 20 senior doctors and nurses being warned against supporting the claims of a whistleblowing colleague, as this would place them in breach of their employment contract.

Mr Shiban Ahmed (see below), a paediatric surgeon employed by University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust, has been suspended on full pay since March after raising the alarm about botched operations on children and unnecessary delays in treatment. A senior colleague has told the IoS about a relentless "campaign" by the trust managers to discredit Mr Ahmed among his colleagues.

The trust said it would always encourage staff to raise issues internally first, but has not and would not prevent staff talking to the media or external parties about patient safety concerns or governance issues.

Peter Bousfield: Gagged and pushed out

In 2007 Dr Peter Bousfield, a consultant gynaecologist and former medical director at Aintree Hospitals Trust in Liverpool, felt forced to accept early retirement, with a gagging clause attached, after his concerns about insufficient staffing levels and patient safety at Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust were ignored for years.

Dr Bousfield repeatedly reported delayed operations, overcrowded clinics and inadequate staffing levels to the medical director and chief executive from 2002. He was pushed towards early retirement in 2006, as an allegation of bullying was made against him – though it was not formally investigated.

He was subsequently threatened with a court injunction by lawyers acting for the trust if he ever took his concerns about patient safety to his MP or the media.

His story came to light when his son, Andrew Bousfield, a non-practising barrister, was referred to the Bar Standards Board by the trust after he tried to represent his father in correspondence.

The trust last night said it was satisfied the terms of the compromise agreement, which included the confidentiality agreement, have not stopped Dr Bousfield raising concerns with the appropriate regulatory bodies.

Nina Lakhani
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Full article in The Independent

Patients who wait too long will get private care on the NHS

By Tom Baldwin and Sam Lister

Patients who do not get the treatment that they need from the NHS within 18 weeks are to be given the legal right to free private care.

The Cabinet agreed this week that the legislation, placing maximum waiting times on the statute book for the first time, should be rushed through Parliament before the next election.

Cancer patients, in particular, will receive funding for private treatment if they have not seen an NHS specialist within two weeks of GP referral.

Downing Street says that the two legal rights, which will be unveiled in next month’s Queen’s Speech, are designed to entrench the dramatic reduction of NHS waiting lists over recent years — as well as allowing Gordon Brown to “throw down the gauntlet” to the Conservative Party in the election campaign.

With NHS budget growth likely to be sharply curtailed whichever party is in power, No 10 believes that the legislation will prevent waiting lists drifting back up.

“This will send a strong ‘no turning back message’ to voters,” a senior government source said. “David Cameron will have to decide whether he wants to repeal this measure and take rights away from patients.”

The Tories have promised to phase out all NHS targets, including those for waiting times, saying that patients should make “informed choices” about their care without hospitals being forced into a straitjacket of government regulation. “Labour always focuses on the process while we think what really matters is whether you are better after your treatment,” a Conservative spokesman said.

Patients are currently offered a choice from a range of NHS, independent and private provision only at the outset of their treatment. They are obliged to stick with that decision even when their treatment is delayed beyond the existing target time limits.

The new rules will allow people to switch to a different hospital, including those in the private sector, if they have been made to wait longer than 18 weeks for treatment by a specialist after seeing their family doctor.

When Labour policy documents published this summer first raised the prospect of a legal entitlement on waiting times, ministers had still not agreed on the timing of legislation and the enforcement mechanism.

The Queen’s Speech on November 18, setting out the Government’s legislative programme for the final months before the election, will promise that the measure for England and Wales will be in place within months.

Ministers plan to issue executive regulations that turn key waiting time pledges from the new NHS constitution into legally binding rights. Downing Street suggested yesterday that although parliamentary approval was not needed to amend the Health Bill, MPs were likely to be given a vote.

Draft legislation is understood to say that primary care trusts must monitor whether patients are languishing in the queue and inform them of their rights for alternative provision. The trusts will be required to “take all reasonable steps” to ensure patients are treated immediately either by the NHS or the private sector.

According to the latest figures from August, about 37,000 patients had not received treatment from an NHS specialist within 18 weeks of their GP referral. There are legitimate clinical explanations for some — and others are caused by patients cancelling their own operations to go on holiday — but officials believe that about half have been “failed by the system”.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, told Cabinet colleagues this week that the new legislation would mean that underperforming hospitals would lose funding from patients going elsewhere and “act as a powerful challenge for them to raise their game”.

Jennifer Dixon, of the Nuffield Trust, said the plans could be seen as “Tory-proofing” the NHS. “It would not only give patients enforceable health care entitlements but it would also prevent managers and clinicians from controlling waiting times as a way of limiting demand and saving money,” she said. “In the past requirements to make financial savings often resulted in hospitals stopping routine surgery for a couple of months before the end of the financial year.”
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Source: Times Online

Watchdog vows to get tough on NHS

One in eight NHS trusts has been told it must urgently improve the care it provides, by a new regulator publishing ratings on England's 392 trusts.

The assessments by the Care Quality Commission show a drop in the number of hospitals meeting basic standards in areas such as hygiene and safety.

But it also said more services than ever could be rated good or excellent.

From April, the CQC will gain new powers to be able to shut any of the 47 underachieving trusts down.

Rigorous assessment

The new commission, which took over the watchdog duties of the old Healthcare Commission earlier this year, pointed out a number of successes in its report.

These included what it called the notable achievement of most patients in England receiving hospital treatment within 18 weeks.

The government said this was the most rigorous assessment the NHS had ever seen.

NHS Ratings Health Minister Mike O'Brien said the report showed improving standards across the health service.

"We have transformed the waiting experience for millions of patients and now have the shortest waits on record. MRSA and C. difficile infections have been significantly reduced and over three quarters of GP surgeries are providing extended opening hours, giving patients greater choice and more convenient access to GPs."

But shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said the report showed the government was unable to "turn round poor performers".

"Many staff are doing a great job in keeping up high standards but we cannot allow that to obscure the fact that there has been poor performance in some very important areas in the NHS, such as maternity and stroke services.

"And it is unacceptable that the number of patients who have had their operations cancelled has risen so sharply."

The CQC looked at every type of NHS trusts, including acute, mental health, primary care and ambulance.

More than half of primary care trusts were rated good or excellent, with many patients reporting being able to get an appointment within two days and services such as chlamydia screening for young people improving.

There were, however, significant regional variations, with trusts in London performing particularly poorly on patient satisfaction with appointments and opening times.

Fewer mental health trusts were rated excellent or good, and some struggled to meet new criteria on collecting data about services. Ambulance services also failed to perform as well as last year, but the CQC nonetheless praised the general response to emergency calls.

But much of the focus is on hospitals: fewer acute and specialist trusts were rated excellent, with more receiving an unimpressive fair grading.

Based on a system of self-reporting, there was a significant drop in the number of acute trusts fully meeting basic standards such as those relating to hygiene, child protection and training: this was down to 59% of all trusts from 69% last year.

Many also failed to meet new performance targets, such as the collection of maternity data to help improve services, and stroke care.

The number of operations cancelled rose for the second year in a row - equating to 63,000 procedures called off at the last minute for non-clinical reasons.

However a higher proportion are now being rearranged within 28 days of the original appointment, and the figure also reflects the much higher number of people now receiving treatment.

Waiting times for treatment have fallen to 18 weeks or less this year, one of the achievements highlighted by the regulator.

It also noted that 98% of the 19 million patients who attended A&E waited less than four hours, while rates of the infections Clostridium difficile and MRSA had both fallen by about a third - despite hospitals themselves reporting failings in hygeine.

While a number of trusts were singled out for praise - including the Royal Marsden, which has scored excellent every year for both quality and finance - the CQC said the focus now had to be on those which had performed persistently poorly.

Twenty trusts scored weak for overall quality, while 27 others have now never scored higher than fair for either quality or finance in the four years since the ratings system was started.

'Nuclear option'

Some particularly poor performing acute trusts were highlighted: Barking, Havering and Redbridge hospitals received a double weak rating, while the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust was deemed weak for the fourth year in a row.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust - which saw a deadly outbreak of clostridium difficile amid serious hygiene lapses between 2004 and 2006 - was rated weak for the third year in a row.

The CQC said it intended to work closely with these 47 trusts to sort out their problems ahead of April next year, when it will gain the power to intervene in every trust, from dealing out admonishments to potentially launching prosecutions and closing services down.

"But that would be the extreme nuclear option for any regulator," said CQC head Cynthia Bower.

"Trust are aware of what their issues are, so none of this is going to come as a surprise to them.

"There is an ongoing process of debate to sort these problems out by April, no-one is just waiting around."

The King's Fund chief executive Niall Dickson stressed that overall the report showed the NHS appeared to be performing well, but that it was unfortunate the ratings did not shed light on why some did well and some badly.

"Patients served by the hospitals and other services that consistently rank at the bottom have a right to know why these organisations are not providing the quality of services that is expected from them.

"We need to understand whether the problems are managerial or structural, and what is being done to help them raise their game."


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Source: BBC News

Watchdog gets tough with patients too according to The Telegraph

The devastating moment parents said goodbye to their son left severely brain-damaged by hospital blunders

This is the heartbreaking moment parents Johanne Rees and Krishna Govekar clutched their newborn baby boy for the last time, just minutes before being forced to switch off his life-support machine.

The parents said goodbye to son Arun, who had been kept alive for 10 days after his birth, after a catalogue of medical blunders left him severely brain-damaged.

The NHS was today ordered to pay the couple £160,000 compensation after midwives at the University Hospital of Wales (UHW), Cardiff, failed to spot the unborn child was in distress.

Ms Rees said today that she believed they would have had better care if she had given birth in her partner's home country of India.

During her ordeal one doctor even rejected Ms Rees' pleas that she had gone into labour, saying she simply needed the toilet.

The harrowing pictures, which were taken by another family member, were released through the couple's solicitor today to highlight their plight.

Ms Rees, 48, had been classed as having a 'high risk' pregnancy because she was aged 44 when she was due to give birth and had previously suffered a miscarriage.

Ms Rees had been admitted to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff 32 weeks into her pregnancy, in November 2005, with abdominal pains.

But she told how her labour was not properly monitored for more than two hours at. She said heart readings 'clearly showed' her unborn baby was in distress.

'I just couldn't understand why they weren't doing anything to help me and my baby,' she said.

'At my last antenatal visit I was told my baby was breech and I would need a caesarean section.

'It was a no-brainer - I knew my baby needed to be delivered urgently.

'I was screaming in agony and begging the midwives to get my baby out but they just left me.

'I couldn't believe it when a doctor arrived and said I wasn't ready to deliver but had probably eaten something that had disagreed with me and to try going to the toilet instead.'

An emergency caesarean was performed an hour-and-a-half later on a second doctor's recommendation.

Baby Arun was taken to the special baby care unit but had suffered irreversible brain damage.

The parents were not told the extent of their baby's health problems for five days. After spending four days with him they made the decision to switch off his life support machine.

Full article in Daily Mail
Also in Daily Mail: Boy, 10, awarded £7.1 million damages for birth blunders which left him brain-damaged

Nurse struck off by GMC for secretly filming neglect and abuse wins appeal

A nurse who was struck off the register for secretly filming care for the elderly at a Brighton hospital has won her battle to return to work.

The High Court approved a settlement between Margaret Haywood and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).

The striking-off order imposed in April this year will be replaced with a one-year caution, which means she can now work as a nurse.

Ms Haywood filmed at the Royal Sussex Hospital for a BBC Panorama programme.

Footage from Ms Haywood's filming was broadcast in July 2005 and showed examples of neglect, including an elderly patient sitting in clothes he had soiled the night before.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council found her guilty of misconduct during a fitness to practise hearing and she appealed in May.

Ms Haywood, from Liverpool, said she was delighted with the verdict.

"Losing my registration after 25 years as a nurse was devastating," she said.

"I have been overwhelmed and humbled by the patient and public interest in my case and would like to thank everyone who has supported me, including the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) for running my appeal.

Full article BBC News

Other posts on my other blog about Margaret Haywood

Some medical staff are struck off for secretly filming neglect and abuse in the NHS.

But Dr Gerry McCann, who is suspected of neglect and concealment of his own child's body, has the approval of the NHS to film - as long as it's for personal reasons.

And a doctor can work in the NHS even if suspected of paedophilia.

At Leicester Hospital, anyway.

Funny old world.

Well done Margaret!

NHS boss gave Birmingham Children's Hospital job reference for future fiancee

Oct 11 2009 by Jeanette Oldham, Sunday Mercury

FORMER ASSISTANT RECOMMENDED FOR TOP POSTS

THE boss of the NHS in England supplied two hospital job references for the woman who is now his fiancee, the Sunday Mercury can reveal.

David Nicholson, 52, recommended former assistant Sarah Jane Marsh, 32, for top posts at Walsall Hospitals NHS Trust and Birmingham Children’s Hospital. But the NHS chief executive, who earns £207,000 per year, has denied the pair were in a relationship when he gave the high-flyer his professional backing.

Last week, we revealed that the divorced father-of-two had become engaged to Ms Marsh, who was recently appointed chief executive of Birmingham Children’s Hospital (BCH).

The attractive brunette has risen to the top tier of the NHS only ten years after graduating with a Master’s Degree. Her first ‘temporary’ job after leaving university in 1999 was as a complaints co-ordinator for a telesales firm. But after enrolling on the NHS Graduate Trainee Scheme in 2000 she became assistant general manager for trauma and orthopaedics at Worcester Hospitals NHS Trust.

Denied

But Mr Nicholson denied they were lovers at the time in a statement to the Sunday Mercury. He said: ‘‘As a former employer, I agreed to provide a reference for a position at Walsall Hospitals NHS Trust and the Chief Operating Officer position at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. We were not in a relationship then. I did not provide a reference for the Chief Executive post at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.”

Sources close to the divorced NHS chief claim the romance started around Christmas. In his statement Mr Nicholson admitted they had enjoyed a romantic trip early in the year. He said: “We went on holidays over New Year 2009. It was a private holiday, organised and paid for by both of us. We were not on NHS business, nor was any part of the trip paid for by the NHS.’’

Delays

Patients had endured delays in treatment and sub-standard care, youngsters having been redirected to other services. BCH chief executive Paul O’Connor resigned in March, two weeks before the report’s publication.

Ms Marsh was then promoted to interim chief executive of the trust. Her permanent appointment to the estimated £155,000-per-year post was made at the end of June.

As part of his NHS package, Mr Nicholson receives an allowance to rent a flat in London.

Full article can be read in Sunday Mercury

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More from Birmingham Childrens hospital:

A BIRMINGHAM hospital paid a PR company £16,000 for just 20 days’ work to handle the fallout from a damning report.

Birmingham Children’s Hospital chiefs brought in two senior media consultants from LTA Communications at a cost of £16,387 when the trust was faced with heavy criticism in a Healthcare Commission report a month ago.

They paid out the equivalent of £86 an hour on the crisis team – despite already having three press officers who work full-time and have a combined salary of at least £100,000.

The money mirrors the annual salary of a junior nurse.

Today, the dad of a baby who died at the hospital described it as “a pathetic waste of money”.

Businessman Ayaz Ahmed, from ­Moseley, whose daughter Alesha died in intensive care after waiting more than two weeks for a bed said: “Spending £16,000 on spin doctors is a pathetic waste of money when ill children can’t even get a bed they need.

“There is something fundamentally wrong with the NHS at the moment, no one cares about lives. I could look at the books and tell them exactly how they should be spending their money.”

He claimed: “They made millions in profit last year yet they want donations for new units and are wasting money like this.”

The figures were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act inquiry by the Birmingham Mail after hospital bosses refused to disclose the figure.

The consultants “advised” and managed press interest as the Foundation hospital came under fire for a catalogue of failings from a severe shortage of beds, causing 70 sick children to be turned away every month, and poor staff training which meant theatre nurses could not recognise surgical equipment.

Martin Salter, director of communications at the hospital, said: “LTA Communications assisted our in-house team with the huge amount of interest in the Healthcare Commission report. Their daily rates have been market tested and are considered to be excellent value for money.”

Birmingham News

NHS plan nearly killed my mother

Oct. 11, 2009 (United Press International) -- A woman says she rescued her 80-year-old mother from starving to death in Hastings, England, under a National Health Service end-of-life protocol.

Christine Ball, 42, said she fought for weeks with staff members at Conquest hospital in Hastings to have her mother, Hazel Fenton, removed from a plan used by NHS officials to ease the suffering of dying patients, The Sunday Times of London reported.

"My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death," Ball said. "It really is a subterfuge for legalized euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS."

After being admitted to the hospital with pneumonia on Jan. 11, hospital medics determined Fenton only had days to live and stopped providing the elderly woman with artificial feeding and antibiotics as part of the care plan.

The Sunday Times said Ball eventually convinced doctors to resume artificial feeding for her mother and the senior citizen was later relocated to a nursing home.

"Patients' needs are assessed before they are placed on the (plan). Daily reviews are undertaken by clinicians whenever possible," an unidentified East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust spokesman said regarding the controversial plan.

Source: here

Government Medicine Kills

Let’s compare America’s system with Canada’s and Great Britain’s.

By Deroy Murdock

As the Senate Finance Committee prepares to vote on its Obamacare bill, it would behoove senators to ask themselves why on Earth America should move even one inch closer to the government-driven health-care model that plagues Canadians and Britons. Thankfully, the Finance Committee bill lacks the government option for health insurance that sends liberal salivary glands gushing. Still, the bill is awash in mandates, regulations, subsidies, taxes, and plenty of other potential distortions that help make single-payer medical systems deadly.

That’s right. Deadly.

Compare America’s system with Canada’s and Great Britain’s. The latter are single-payer, universal health-care programs in which medical treatment is free at the point of service (Yay!), although citizens eventually pay for it through higher taxes (Boo!).

According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data, there were 26.6 MRI machines in the U.S. per million people in 2004. In Canada, there were 4.9 such devices, while Britain enjoyed 5. For every 100,000 Americans, 2006 saw 436.8 receive angioplasties. Among Canadians, that figure was 135.9, while only 93.2 Britons per 100,000 got that cardiac procedure.

Maybe that’s why, among American men, heart-attack deaths in 2004 stood at 53.8 per 100,000. In Canada, 58.3 men per 100,000 died of cardiac arrest, while coronaries buried 69.5 of every 100,000 British males.

The fatality rate for breast cancer, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis and Lancet Oncology, is 25 percent in the U.S., 28 percent in Canada, and 46 percent in Great Britain.

Among those diagnosed with prostate cancer, 19 percent die of the disease in America. In Canada, 25 percent of such patients succumb to this disease. And in Great Britain — an Anglophone NATO member and America’s closest ally — prostate cancer kills 57 percent of those who contract it. That is triple the American fatality rate.

This chart presents additional examples of how Canadians and Britons needlessly suffer and drop dead, thanks to government medicine:


The Senate Finance Committee should sink Obama-Baucuscare and instead craft a patient-friendly, pro-market, limited-government approach to health-care reform. Perhaps some senators cannot fathom the Hippocratic Oath’s key insight: First, do no harm. If that’s Greek to them, here it is in language they understand: First, don’t kill your voters.

— Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.

Source: National Review Online

Leicester Royal Infirmary doctor misdiagnosed hundreds of children over a 10 year period

Hospital 'sorry' for boy's death

The parents of a three-year-old boy who died after being given the wrong medication have received an apology and compensation from a Leicester hospital.

Royal Infirmary bosses have admitted Ryan Pitcher received "incorrect treatment" for epilepsy from Dr Andrew Holton, which led to his death in 1997.

Dr Holton misdiagnosed hundreds of children over 10 years at the hospital.

Ryan's parents Simon and Diane said concerns about Dr Holton should have been investigated earlier.

His parents, of Heather, near Coalville, described Ryan as "like a zombie" on the medication he was prescribed.

Investigations by the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust found Dr Holton ignored the advice of other consultants, who said Ryan's dosage should be decreased.

Mother Diane said: "It's devastating really. How do you live with knowing someone's killed your child, made them suffer for years?"

A report by an independent NHS inquiry team in 2003 found complaints were first made about Dr Holton almost three years before he was suspended.

Fifty-two children died while Dr Holton was practising, but Ryan's is the first death linked to the consultant paediatrician's treatment.

'Landmark case'

He was allowed to retrain and is still working in medicine.

A hospital spokesman said: "Ryan's case was very complex and it was investigated extremely carefully.

"On the basis of expert evidence, the trust accepts that Ryan's treatment and medication were incorrect.

"The trust is deeply sorry for what has happened and has made an unreserved apology to Ryan's parents."

The amount of compensation agreed has not been disclosed. The trust declined to say how many other families affected had received compensation.

Robert Rose, the solicitor representing the family, said: "All the official reports that we've had up until today have indicated there were no causes for concern for those children that died whilst under the care of Dr Holton.

"This in a sense is a landmark case because it shows there are real causes for concern."

Source: BBC News

Deadliest month: As new doctors start in August, mortality rate in A&E departments rises by 6 per cent

If you're going to have an accident, you may want to avoid the first week of August. It is the most dangerous time to be admitted to accident and emergency, a study suggests.
Researchers found hospital mortality rates rise by 6 per cent on the first Wednesday in August.
Perhaps not coincidentally, that is also the day newly qualified doctors, fresh from medical school, are let loose on the wards of NHS hospitals.

Dr Paul Aylin, senior author of the study from the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College London, said: 'We wanted to find out whether mortality rates changed on the first Wednesday in August, when junior doctors take up their new posts.
'What we have found looks like an interesting pattern and we would now like to look at this in more detail to find out what might be causing the increase.

'Our study does not mean that people should avoid going into hospital that week. This is a relatively small difference in mortality rates, and the numbers of excess deaths are very low.
'It's too early to say what might be causing it. It might simply be the result of differences between the patients who were admitted.'
The rise in deaths could, however, be caused by inexperienced junior doctors finding their feet - at a time when senior doctors are also more likely to be on holiday.

Full article in Daily Mail

Mother-of-five died from overdose of chemotherapy drug after gross neglect by hospital

An inquest jury today ruled that a cancer patient died as a result of manslaughter by gross neglect after she was mistakenly prescribed a lethal dose of chemotherapy.
Dr Jacqueline James admitted earlier this week at Bristol Coroner's Court prescribing Anna McKenna, 56, quadruple the amount of a chemotherapy drug required for her bone marrow cancer treatment.
The mother-of-five was diagnosed with Myeloma in March 2006 and put on a four-day course of Idarubicin.
But instead of getting 60mg of the drug over the course of four days, she was given the same amount on each of the four days.
Mrs McKenna, a housewife from Knowle, Bristol, was left with very few white blood cells and her immune system was severely impaired.
She had been given around two years to live and treatment could have prolonged her life, the inquest heard.
She died on April 18, 2006, just three weeks after her first chemotherapy session, after she developed complications including fever and renal failure.
Today, the jury returned a verdict of 'manslaughter by gross neglect'.
Mrs McKenna's husband David, a retired engineer, was in court to hear Dr James's evidence this week, during which the consultant said she was 'very sorry' the mistake was made.

Her error was not the sole factor in the tragedy, as staff at the pharmacy at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol failed to screen the dosage or challenge the figures.
Pathologist Dr Hugh White, who carried out the post mortem, said in a statement: 'Instead of being given 15mg over four days she was given four times this on each of the four days.

'Records show she had a normal white blood cell count, but following the chemotherapy she had vomiting, diarrhoea and pain.'
Shortly after the error, another patient was also given an overdose.
The hospital trust has now introduced several 'robust measures' to tighten up prescription screening practices, including having two pharmacists looking at each one.

Source: Daily Mail

Mum's heartbreak after NHS blamed for baby's death

A mother has spoken of the enduring heartbreak after her baby died from massive head injuries just hours after being born at a Kent hospital.

Carla and Johnny Bradbrook said their son Joshua died “suffering and in pain” at Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford following a series of errors in his delivery.

Since his birth in June, 2005, his parents and clinical negligence specialists Irwin Mitchell have fought a protracted legal battle, which saw Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust finally admit liability for his death in December last year.

Mrs Bradbrook, 31, said that after the General Medical Council’s recent decision to dismiss their claim against the doctor who delivered Joshua they wanted to speak out and highlight their horrific experience.

“It is just the worst thing that could happen to anybody,” she said. “When you go full term you expect to have a baby.

“Labour and delivery is never the most normal thing to experience but he suffered, he was in pain and that is something we imagine and something that never goes away.”

The couple remain haunted by the fact their son was born with fractures to both sides of his skull after several attempts were made to force the birth with both a suction device and forceps.

But even after the trust admitted liability for his death, the GMC advised it would would not re-open its investigations because there were insufficient prospects of establishing that Dr Mohlala, the registrar who oversaw the birth, was unfit to practice.

Mrs Bradbrook said it was her first child and the couple put their trust completely in the doctor and nurses during labour.

“We feel people should be aware that these things happen. You cannot just put 100 per cent faith in doctors.”

Full article: Kent News

NHS nurse faces the sack for wearing her crucifix

Monday September 21,2009

By Cyril Dixon

A CHRISTIAN nurse is facing the sack for refusing to take off a cross around her neck – because it poses a “risk” to patients.

Devout Shirley Chaplin, 54, has worn the tiny one-inch crucifix ­since she started working at the hospital 31 years ago.

But NHS bosses now insist the silver cross is a health and safety risk and she must remove it.

They claim the necklace could endanger her or a patient if it was grabbed.

However, the hospital does accommodate other faith ­symbols, such as Muslim nurses’ head scarves.

Full article: Daily Express

NHS 'failed' over cannibal killer

NHS failures contributed to two people being killed by a man with schizophrenia after he was freed from a secure hospital, two inquiries suggest.

Peter Bryan, 39, of east London, killed a friend and ate parts of his brain in 2004 - two years after being released from Rampton, in Nottinghamshire.

He then went on to kill a patient after being sent to Broadmoor.

The independent reports into the deaths said while Bryan was a unique case, more should have been done to stop him.

The inquiries, carried out for NHS London, the body which oversees health services in the capital, blamed system failures instead of individuals for the mistakes.

However, they acknowledge he was a difficult case because he could go through long periods without showing any signs of overt mental illness.

Bryan was first sent to Rampton secure hospital after beating 20-year-old shop assistant Nisha Sheth to death with a hammer in 1993.

In 2002 he was released into the community after applying to a mental health tribunal and allowed to live as a care in the community out-patient.

He was sent to a hostel where residents have their own front door and room key.

But after an allegation of an indecent assault on a 17-year-old girl, Bryan was sent back to hospital, but this time he was only an informal patient on an open ward at Newham General Hospital in east London.

In February 2004, he walked out of the unit and killed his friend Brian Cherry, 45, before frying and eating parts of his brain. He had also started to dismember the body.

He was arrested and after appearing in court was sent to another secure hospital, Broadmoor.

Within weeks of arriving, Bryan attacked fellow patient, Richard Loudwell, 59, who later died.

In court, he pleaded guilty to killing both men on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

One psychiatrist who interviewed Bryan concluded that he was "probably the most dangerous man he had ever assessed".

Full article: BBC News

Doctors left premature baby to die because he was born two days too early

By Vanessa Allen and Andrew Levy
Last updated at 7:50 AM on 09th September 2009

Doctors left a premature baby to die because he was born two days too early, his devastated mother claimed yesterday.

Sarah Capewell begged them to save her tiny son, who was born just 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy - almost four months early.

They ignored her pleas and allegedly told her they were following national guidelines that babies born before 22 weeks should not be given medical treatment.

Miss Capewell, 23, said doctors refused to even see her son Jayden, who lived for almost two hours without any medical support.

She said he was breathing unaided, had a strong heartbeat and was even moving his arms and legs, but medics refused to admit him to a special care baby unit.

Miss Capewell is now fighting for a review of the medical guidelines.

Full article in Daily Mail

Agency that hired death doctor Daniel Ubani is handed fresh NHS deal

An agency that supplied the NHS with a doctor who killed a patient with a drug overdose has had its contract renewed.

Dr Daniel Ubani, 66, a German-registered medic originally from Nigeria, gave tragic David Gray 10 times the safe dose of diamorphine.

Mr Gray, 70, who had kidney stones and was in pain with colic, died shortly afterwards in February 2008.

Take Care Now, the agency that sent Dr Ubani is being investigated over its services in five care trust areas.

But NHS Cambridgeshire is extending its contract to provide them with out-ofhours doctors for two months. Lib Dem Cllr Geoff Heathcock said it was "worrying". The trust said it was to allow time for a "rigorous process" to procure service providers.
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Source: Mirror.co.uk

Prisoners eat 'better' than NHS patients

Researchers have claimed the food provided in prisons is better than in NHS hospitals.

Experts from Bournemouth University examined the quality of food offered to prisoners and NHS patients.

They say people in hospital are losing out on nutrition because they are not being helped with eating or having their diet monitored.

A Department of Health spokesman said most patients were "satisfied with the food they receive in hospitals".

Professor John Edwards said about 40% of patients entering hospital were already malnourished, and this did not tend to improve during their stay.

"If you are in prison then the diet you get is extremely good in terms of nutritional content," he said.

"The food that is provided is actually better than most civilians have.

Full article: BBC News
All stories on this topic here

'Cruel and neglectful' care of one million NHS patients exposed

Elderly patients must have proper care, Claire Rayner says

One million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain, according to a major report released today.

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Published: 12:01AM BST 27 Aug 2009

In the last six years, the Patients Association claims hundreds of thousands have suffered from poor standards of nursing, often with 'neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel' treatment.

The charity has disclosed a horrifying catalogue of elderly people left in pain, in soiled bed clothes, denied adequate food and drink, and suffering from repeatedly cancelled operations, missed diagnoses and dismissive staff.

The Patients Association said the dossier proves that while the scale of the scandal at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust - where up to 1,200 people died through failings in urgent care - was a one off, there are repeated examples they have uncovered of the same appalling standards throughout the NHS.

While the criticisms cover all aspects of hospital care, the treatment and attitude of nurses stands out as a repeated theme across almost all of the cases.

They have called on Government and the Care Quality Commission to conduct an urgent review of standards of basic hospital care and to enforce stricter supervision and regulation.

Claire Rayner, President of the Patients Association and a former nurse, said:“For far too long now, the Patients Association has been receiving calls on our helpline from people wanting to talk about the dreadful, neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel treatment their elderly relatives had experienced at the hands of NHS nurses.

“I am sickened by what has happened to some part of my profession of which I was so proud.

"These bad, cruel nurses may be - probably are - a tiny proportion of the nursing work force, but even if they are only one or two percent of the whole they should be identified and struck off the Register.”

Full article in Telegraph
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Man collapses with ruptured appendix... three weeks after NHS doctors 'took it out'

By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 12:15 AM on 26th August 2009

After weeks of excruciating pain, Mark Wattson was understandably relieved to have his appendix taken out.

Doctors told him the operation was a success and he was sent home.

But only a month later the 35-year-old collapsed in agony and had to be taken back to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance.

To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured - a potentially fatal complication.

In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Mr Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure.

The blunder has left Mr Wattson jobless, as bosses at the shop where he worked did not believe his story and sacked him.

Mr Wattson told of the moment he realised there had been a serious mistake.

'I was lying on a stretcher in terrible pain and a doctor came up to me and said that my appendix had burst,' he said.

'I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I told these people I had my appendix out just four weeks earlier but there it was on the scanner screen for all to see.

'I thought, "What the hell did they slice me open for in the first place?"

A spokesman for Great Western Hospital confirmed that a representative had met Mr Wattson and that an investigation had been started.

He was unable to confirm what, if anything, was removed in the first operation.
Paul Gearing, deputy general manager for general surgery at Great Western Hospital NHS Trust, said: 'We are unable to comment on individual cases.

'However, we would like to apologise if Mr Wattson felt dissatisfied with the care he received at Great Western Hospital.'

Compensation payments to NHS patients have risen by 20 per cent in the past year to a record high of £769million. At this rate more than £2million a day is being paid over claims against the Health Service.

Full article in Mail Online

Mother dies a year after being denied her daughter's kidney

By Chris Brooke
Last updated at 1:11 AM on 24th August 2009

A mother who was denied a kidney transplant from her dying daughter because of rules banning donor requests has died. Rachel Leake, 41, had been in hospital for three months with septicemia.

Her 21-year-old daughter Laura Ashworth had wanted to give her a kidney, but died in April last year before starting the process of becoming a 'living donor'.

Doctors then insisted her organs go to strangers at the top of the waiting list.

Full article in Daily Mail

NHS staff paid overtime when off sick

NHS workers who take sick leave are claiming tens of millions of pounds a year in overtime and anti-social hours allowances while off work, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.

By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Published: 10:00PM BST 21 Aug 2009

More than one million NHS staff are paid well above their basic salary when they are ill under a contract which guarantees them a far better deal than those working in the private sector.

The generous terms mean that when they are on sick leave they receive full pay, plus a selection of benefits. These include supplements for unsocial hours and overtime for six months, with half pay for a further six.

The deal means when an NHS worker - such as an ambulance worker, nurse, porter, or midwife - goes off sick they are paid according to an average of their total pay for the previous three months, rather than just their basic salary.

In many cases, workers have boosted their income by working nights or extra hours, or are paid a ‘recruitment and retention’ bonus, which can add tens of thousands of pounds to the basic salary of a middle grade worker living in London.

The NHS has higher sickness rates than the rest of the public sector and enjoys the most generous terms and conditions while off work. The service loses 10.3 million working days annually due to sickness absence alone, costing £1.7 billion per year.

Critics have said the scheme is "morally and ethically wrong" and should be reviewed.

However, supporters said NHS workers are exposed to unique pressures, with 56,000 physically attacked each year, and they deserve to be looked after.

The news comes after a report this week found that, of the 1.4 million workers in the NHS, 4.5 per cent or 45,000 call in sick per day.

Stephen Alambritis, of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the sick pay terms should be reviewed, especially in light of the recession when all workers are being asked to make sacrifices.

He said the organisation has been 'caught out': "To have sick pay going for six months and include overtime and extra payments does seem to be overly generous; an employee in the private sector would not expect that.

“NHS staff do a sterling job and there is huge stress involved in the work but the pensions are good, the sick leave is good, it is not brilliantly paid, but there is security of tenure.

"In the private sector the stress comes with the fact the job may not be there the next day."

The average NHS worker takes 10.7 days off sick a year, compared with 9.7 days for the public sector as a whole and 6.4 days in the private sector.

The Telegraph has received allegations of NHS workers asking managers when their six months on full pay expires so they know when to return to work, people booking holidays and then taking sick leave to cover the time off, and posting photographs on Facebook of themselves out with their children while off sick.

The terms and conditions on sickness absence are included in the Agenda for Change contract which covers nurses, midwives, hospital porters, paramedics, ambulance workers and administration staff, but not doctors. The wage bill for the contract in England was more than £28bn in 2007/8, according to the National Audit Office.

Under the contract, full pay is paid for the first six months off sick and then a further six months at half pay after five years’ service. Before then, the length of paid time off is on a sliding scale.

Overtime, over the standard 37.5 hours a week, and unsocial hours, for working nights or weekends, is payable at time and a half with public holidays paid at double time, or lieu time can be requested instead.

Staff can also receive around £3,205 in 'recruitment and retention premia' where employers find it difficult to fill posts, while those in inner London are paid a 'high cost area supplement' worth 20 per cent of basic salary, to a maximum of £6,080.

In the private sector, standard sick leave normally includes a short period on full pay, around one month or six weeks, followed by statutory sick pay paid at £79.15 per week for people earning £95 or more. In many cases employees are automatically put on statutory sick pay, once they qualify - which is when they have been off sick for four days.

Dr John O'Sullivan, an occupational health consultant in the private sector, said the NHS terms were 'morally and ethically wrong' and there was little incentive for staff to return to work.

"This is taxpayers’ money. The NHS has the expertise to get people back to work but they just do not use it on their own staff."

The Health Service terms and conditions also eclipse other areas of the public sector: police receive full pay for six months and then half pay for a further six, but do not receive any overtime. Teachers get full pay for 25 days off sick then half pay for 75 days in their first year, rising to 20 weeks’ full pay and 20 weeks on half pay after four years working.

Neil Carberry, Head of Employment Policy at employers’ group, the Confederation of British Industry, said: “The inclusion of overtime and other extras makes this a more generous scheme than the private sector norm, and the overall approach in the NHS to the management of absence and long-term sickness is a real concern.

“Firms use occupational health provision to ensure all absence is genuine, and innovative rehabilitation policies that get people back to work sooner. The NHS should do the same.”

However, Sian Thomas, director of NHS Employers, said: “There is no evidence that withholding pay leads to increased efficiency and improved staff morale. In fact, it can be counter productive because it leads to feelings of resentment and de-motivation among all staff.

“In order to successfully tackle sickness employers need to address the long-term problem. In the NHS this includes preventing injury from lifting and handling, helping staff build up their emotional resilience and reducing physical and mental abuse from patients.”

A spokesman for Unison, the union, said overtime was “very much a thing of the past” : "We have to look after our NHS staff. If they are not fit and safe they cannot look after patients. If you go to any A&E department at night at weekends you can see the levels of violence and abuse staff face. Paramedics in particular are at risk of attack."

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "Agenda for Change provides a fair pay system that recognises the dedicated work that over 1.1 million NHS staff do every day to help us deliver high quality patient care to all.

"We take the health of NHS staff seriously. The ongoing NHS Health and Wellbeing review is crucial to achieving our ambition to develop world class health and wellbeing services for all NHS staff.”

Britain's NHS: Fulfilling Targets Rather than Treating Patients

By Doug Bandow on 8.22.09 @ 5:29AM

We can all agree that America's health care is an inefficient amalgam of private and public with at times anomalous and unfair results. But where the government provides almost half of the funding and drives the rest of the system through the tax system, such problems are inevitable. The question is whether increasing political control would improve the treatment of patients--which is, after all, the purpose of the health care system The answer to that question is no.

Unfortunately, increased governmental control almost certainly would put political before patient priorities. We certainly see that in Great Britain. Consider this astonishing story from the Daily Telegraph (it's a couple months old, but I just came across it):

People arriving at Accident and Emergency departments with symptoms which could indicate the aggressive spread of the disease are waiting weeks for diagnosis and treatment while "routine" cases are prioritised.

Hospital managers told researchers that treating desperately sick patients more quickly would "reflect badly" on their performance against Government cancer targets which only cover those referred to specialists by GPs.

Doctors, patients groups and politicians were appalled by what one described as a "breathtaking admission" which confirmed their "very worst fears" about how far the NHS target culture has gone in distorting clinical priorities.

The point is not to demonize the British system. But obviously the NHS has to fulfill political targets and respond to bureaucratic priorities, which often have nothing to do with, or even actively subvert the objective of, providing quality patient care. And it is far harder for British patients to escape the system when it miscarries so badly.

We can't afford to make a similar mistake here.
-----
Source: The American Spectator

Suspended Baby P doctor allowed to work in Ireland

Saturday August 15 2009

The doctor who has been suspended from practising in the UK after failing to spot Baby P's broken back two days before he died is still entitled to work in Ireland.

Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat was the last medic to see tragic toddler Baby P and failed to notice his injuries – inflicted after horrendous abuse by his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger.

Dr Al-Zayyat (53) was suspended from practising by the General Medical Council in the UK last November while an investigation takes place.

In August 2007, Dr Sabah Al- Zayyat was the last medic to see tragic toddler Baby P and failed to notice he had fractured ribs and a broken back.

She said she was unable to conduct a full medical examination of the 17-month old because the child was “miserable and cranky”.

However the toddler had a snapped spine and eight fractured ribs, the victim of horrendous abuse by his mother, her boyfriend and their lodger.

A spokesperson for the Irish Medical Council told the Herald: “Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat’s name is entered on the General Division of the Register of Medical Practitioners and as such she is entitled to work in Ireland.

“The Medical Council is aware of matters under consideration by the General Medical Council that are in the public domain.”

Meanwhile, it is understood that Dr Al-Zayyat is suing Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, for unfair dismissal following the decision not to renew her fixed term contract.

She is expected to claim that she was never shown the child’s medical history and so was not given an opportunity to realise he was the long-term victim of abuse.

Her case may also focus on a shortage of doctors at St Ann’s Hospital in Tottenham, which is run by the Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Trust.

Lawyers are also likely to argue that she is a scapegoat for wider failings in the child’s care. Last year she issued a statement saying: “Like everyone involved in this case, I have been deeply affected by the shocking and tragic circumstances of this young child’s death.”

She added that her professional career had been devoted to the care of children. Baby P, whose name has recently been revealed as Peter, died after months of sadistic torture in one of the worst cases of child abuse the UK has ever seen.

This week, the identities of his mother and her sadistic lover, who were jailed for the death of Baby P, were finally revealed.

Tracey Connelly (28) and her boyfriend Steven Barker (33) were jailed for causing or allowing the death of 17-month-old Peter Connelly in his bloodspattered room in Haringey, North London.

Suffered

He had suffered dozens of injuries after months of abuse at the time of his death, including a broken back and fractured ribs.

The media had been prevented from naming the couple since last year when they were convicted of causing or allowing the death of Peter.

The lifting of the ban on identification, a week after the second anniversary of the death of Baby P, also meant that Jason Owen, the third defendant, who was a lodger in the house, could be identified as the brother of Barker.

Owen was also convicted over Baby P’s death, but there was no ban on naming him. Dr Al-Zayyat has previously worked in a number of hospitals in Ireland between 1999 and 2006.

They HSE told the Herald that it has no records of complaints against her.

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/suspended-baby-p-doctor-allowed-to-work-here-1861254.html

List of hospitals with high death rates published by NHS regulator

David Rose, Health Correspondent

A list of hospitals that have sparked safety alerts after unusually high numbers of patients died has been published by the NHS regulator.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) revealed details of all trusts where mortality rates were high enough to require a formal investigation in the past two years.

Overall, there were 85 alerts that required investigations among trusts in England, but of those only seven were required to produce action plans to improve their care.

These included Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, where an official report published in March found that appalling emergency care had led to between 400 and 1,200 patients dying needlessly.

The alerts, based on information from the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College London and the CQC, are triggered if numbers of deaths among hospital patients admitted for particular conditions or procedures are significantly higher than expected.

The Department of Health said that it welcomed the publication of the data, which will be updated every three months. But Richard Lilford, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Birmingham, said that the data revealed little about the quality of care.

“We’re saying that these hospitals are bad apples. I don’t think the methodology is capable of doing that,” he told the Health Service Journal (HSJ).

The other trusts that required action plans were investigated in connection with their death rates in a range of patient groups, from newborn babies at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust to adults with broken hips at Basingstoke and North Hampshire NHS Trust and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust.

Death rates also triggered warnings among heart attack patients at Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, those who suffered aneurysms at Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and septicaemia (blood poisoning) at Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust.

Out of 45 alerts followed up with trusts, in 29 cases quality of care was not a concern, the HSJ reported.

Source: Times Online

Woman gives birth on pavement 'after being refused ambulance'

A young mother gave birth on a pavement outside a hospital after she was told to make her own way there.

Mother-of-three Carmen Blake called her midwife to ask for an ambulance when she went into labour unexpectedly with her fourth child.

But the 27-year-old claims she was refused an ambulance and told to walk the 100m from her house in Leicester to the city's nearby Royal Infirmary.

Her daughter Mariah was delivered on a pavement outside the hospital by a passer-by, just before ambulance crews arrived.

Today the Trust that runs the hospital said it would look into any complaint made about the advice and care the 27-year-old received.

Ms Blake said she started going into labour at about 7.15am on Sunday, August 2. She said: "I phoned up the Royal Infirmary, it's just across the road, and they said to go into a hot bath, and then to make my way over there.

"I went into the bath and realised she was going to come quickly. I didn't think I'd be able to make it out of the bath, so I phoned the maternity ward back and told them to get an ambulance out.

'They said they were not sending an ambulance and told me I had had nine months to sort out a lift.'

Full article in Daily Mail

Sarah Brown joins Twitter war on U.S. over attack on 'evil and Orwellian' NHS

Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah have joined a Twitter campaign defending the NHS from withering U.S. attacks.

Mrs Brown backed the online fightback by tweeting: '#welovetheNHS - more than we can say' after the service was derided by American critics as an 'evil and Orwellian' system that puts a financial cap on the value of human life and refuses to treat the elderly.

The Prime Minister threw his weight behind the campaign amid a bitter debate over U.S. president Barack Obama's health care reforms.

Republicans and other campaigners in America have warned against the dangers of 'socialised' health care and claim the NHS proves the pitfalls of the Obama plan.

Full article in Daily Mail
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Make it work then - for everyone!

NHS patients denied op that helped celebrity Fern Britton

HUNDREDS of dangerously overweight patients are being denied obesity ­surgery on the NHS … because they are not fat enough.

In direct contravention of official guidelines, up to half the ­primary care trusts in England are denying seriously obese patients surgery.

The National ­Institute for Clinical Excellence has said all patients with a body mass index of 40, a figure gained by measuring weight and height, are ­eligible for weight-reducing ­surgery, such as gastric bands.

This was the procedure that helped former This Morning host Fern ­Britton lose over 5st. In the wake of her success there has been a 40 per cent increase in patients seeking the ­surgery over the past three years.

Now, in a bid to curtail numbers, many primary care trusts are demanding that patients have a BMI of at least 45 or 50 before they will be ­considered for surgery. Many doctors in the ­obesity field say this is ­short-sighted, with some ­warning it could ­condemn many patients to death.

Professor John Baxter of the British Obesity Surgery Society said: “This is outrageous. The Nice guidance had defined for everyone who should be getting this surgery.

“Patients with a BMI of 30-40 are considered seriously obese so Nice chose the upper limit of 40. Anyone with a BMI of 40 would definitely ­benefit from surgery.

“To make the new target 50 is quite unreasonable.

“Patients’ lives will inevitably be at risk if they don’t get surgery.”

Full article at Sunday Express

NHS to be swamped by 1m illegals

By GRAEME WILSON
Deputy Political Editor, The Sun

A MILLION illegal immigrants could benefit from proposals to let failed asylum seekers use the NHS, it was claimed last night.
The Government came under fire for unveiling plans to give free health care to thousands of asylum seekers AFTER their applications have been rejected.

Experts warned the decision to loosen the rules could give the green light to a million illegals already in Britain to use the NHS.

The decision was slipped out by ministers the day before Parliament breaks up for the summer.

Under current rules, asylum seekers get free healthcare while their application is being considered.

However, they lose this privilege if their asylum claims are rejected.

Under the new proposals, failed asylum seekers who have a "recognised barrier" to returning home - or who are surviving on state handouts - will get free NHS treatment.

Failed asylum seekers with kids and unaccompanied children will also be eligible.

Migrationwatch chairman Sir Andrew Green blasted the move last night. He said: "These proposals amount to an open door for one million illegal immigrants to get access to the NHS.

"It's little wonder that thousands are queuing up around Calais to get in."

But health minister Ann Keen insisted: "They strike the right balance between controlled access, the protection and promotion of wider public health, and ensuring that the healthcare needs of the most vulnerable groups are protected."

NHS advice to school children: "An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away"

By Daniel Martin
Last updated at 11:10 PM on 12th July 2009

The NHS is telling school pupils they have a 'right' to an enjoyable sex life and that it is good for their health.
A Health Service leaflet says experts concentrate too much on the need for safe sex and loving relationships, and not enough on the pleasure it can bring.
But family campaigners last night condemned the guidance, saying it encouraged underage sex and could increase rates of sexually-transmitted diseases.
Under the heading 'an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away', the leaflet says: 'Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?'

The advice, which also claims regular sex is good for cardiovascular health, has been circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers.
It came to light just a week after it emerged that teenagers who took part in a £6million Government initiative to reduce teenage pregnancies were more than twice as likely to fall pregnant as other girls.
The scheme tried to persuade girls not to get pregnant by handing out condoms and teaching them about sex.
The NHS leaflet has been drawn up by Sheffield primary care trust and is entitled Pleasure.

About 40,000 teenagers become pregnant every year in the UK - the highest level in western Europe. More than half end in abortion.

Full article can be read in: Daily Mail

Cruelty, neglect and a catalogue of blunders: stories from today's NHS

Hospital patients are repeatedly being exposed to cruelty, neglect and blunders at the hands of the health service, a report has warned.

By Laura Donnelly and Ian Johnston
Published: 9:00PM BST 04 Jul 2009

Britain's leading patient charity has drawn up a dossier detailing failings in health care which it says are suffered by thousands of people each year, with many left to die in pain or stripped of their basic dignity.

More than 5,000 people contacted the Patients Association's helplines last year because they or a relative had experienced poor medical care.

Medication errors and failures to act on vital information in medical records were also repeated.

The charity said it decided to draw up the report, detailing the experiences of more than a dozen patients, in order to highlight problems which have now become "endemic" across the NHS, as compassion is sacrificed to a targets culture.

Cases include:

– A woman who survived cancer for 40 years, who died from an infected bedsore which the hospital failed to treat;

– a dying leukaemia victim refused pain relief despite his cries;

– a former nurse who was mocked by hospital staff for being a "drama queen" when their rough handling opened painful wounds;

– a cancer sufferer who lost the will to live after being given a drug overdose.

The Sunday Telegraph is highlighting the cases as part of its campaign, Heal Our Hospitals, which is demanding an overhaul of NHS targets to ensure they improve the quality of patient care.

More than 4,950 people have signed a petition backing the campaign. Last week the Government promised to reform the target regime – but has so far only committed to discarding diktats which have already been met.

Katherine Murphy, from the Patients Association, said: "Our concern is that the very basics of dignity, care and compassion that should be at the heart of care are being forgotten, in a culture which is focused on targets, and bureaucracy.

"Each of these stories is desperately sad; every week we hear more tales of needless suffering, pain and anxiety and in many cases needless death.

"It is desperately urgent that those running hospitals, and those in Government, listen and learn from these experiences".

Dr Peter Carter, General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said some of the incidents described in the dossier were indefensible.

He said: "We will not defend nurses who behave in ways that are contrary to the principles and ethics on which nursing is founded.

"I do believe the vast majority of nurses are decent, highly skilled individuals, and most surveys of patient satisfaction back that up, but we have to face up to the fact that there are some who become inured to what patients are going through".

While individual nurses had to take personal responsibility for cruel comments, and a lack of sensitivity to patients, he warned that "a target-driven culture" had increased pressure on staff to deal with higher numbers of patients more quickly.

The Patient Association's report, Patients Not Numbers, will be published later this month.

To sign The Sunday Telegraph 'Heal our Hospitals' petition, click here.

Baby P's doctor, Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat, to sue for £100,000

By Daily Mail Reporter

The doctor who was sacked from Great Ormond Street after she failed to spot Baby P's broken back is demanding compensation from the hospital.

Dr Sabah Al-Zayyat, a paediatric consultant who was the first person sacked in the wake of the scandal, has launched legal action against the hospital following her dismissal nine months after Baby Peter's death.

The 17-month-old could be alive today but Dr Al-Zayyat decided against conducting a full medical examination two days before he died in August 2007 because he was 'miserable and cranky'.

A source close to the case told the London Evening Standard that Dr Al-Zayyat, who lives in Ilford, had launched legal action for unfair dismissal.

The claim could be worth a six-figure sum, the minimum which would be £100,000.
The action will spark anger that a doctor roundly blamed for her part in Baby P's death should seek compensation.

It is understood Dr Al-Zayyat, who trained in Pakistan and Ireland, will argue she has been made a scapegoat for wider failures.

She was employed on a rolling six-month contract by Great Ormond Street on a salary of more than £75,000.

Dr Al-Zayyat is expected to claim she was never shown the child's full medical history and so didn't realise he was the long-term victim of abuse.

An official report recently criticised the hospital for failing to employ enough consultants to run the clinic. Dr Al-Zayyat's case may focus on a shortage of doctors which put her under huge pressure.

She is represented by lawyers working for the Medical Protection Society, the body which provides professional indemnity for doctors.

A Great Ormond Street spokesman said: 'We can confirm we have received notice of legal action. The trust will vigorously defend its position.

'We believe we acted fairly and in the interests of patients. Detailed rebuttal of Dr Al-Zayyat's claims will have to wait for any hearing.'

The spokesman added: 'We didn't scapegoat her. The case surrounds her dismissal from GOSH following the decision not to renew her fixed-term contract. The trust denies that the issue in the case is systematic failures.

'Even a junior doctor should have recognised the risks in a situation where there was a letter on file clearly stating that there were child protection concerns, and the child had visible bruises.

'This should have prompted any doctor to contact the social worker. It is also basic training to strip a child in order to carry out a full investigation.

'Two serious case reviews have questioned her practice.'

A source told the Evening Standard: 'Dr Al-Zayyat is claiming Great Ormond Street unfairly ended the contract and she is entitled to damages because of that.'

Baby P's body was found in a blood-spattered cot at his Tottenham home.

His mother was later jailed for a minimum five years for allowing or causing the death; her boyfriend received 12 years for his 'major role' while their lodger, Jason Owen, was sentenced to a minimum three years.
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Source: Daily Mail
BABY Peter Forum

Stroke patient dies after ambulance driver clocks off

A stroke patient has died after an ambulance driver allegedly refused to work beyond his shift and clocked off part-way through a 999 journey.

By Nigel Bunyan
Published: 4:57PM BST 07 Jun 2009

The driver was 15 minutes over time when he diverted to his depot instead of carrying on direct to the hospital.

The patient deteriorated during the drive and died of a suspected heart attack soon after arriving at North Tees hospital's accident and emergency unit.

Both the driver and the medic travelling with him have now been suspended as officials at the North East Ambulance Services investigate the delay on May 18.

His replacement took the patient on to hospital, but the detour had added half a mile and four minutes to the journey.

The patient was named as 69-year-old Ali Asghar, a father of four, from Stockton on Tees, Cleveland.

Mr Asghar's youngest son, Mohammed, 33, said he was not aware of the delay in the ambulance arriving at hospital but told the Daily Mail: "If that has happened it shouldn't have.

"If you have a patient in an ambulance you don't worry about your bloody shift finishing.

"The driver should not get away with it. He should have to pay for it. He is responsible for the death.

"The time he took to detour could have saved my father's life."

An NHS source said that if the case against the driver was proven his actions had been "absolutely abhorrent".

"Paramedics pride themselves on the public being able to feel they are in the best hands when they are called out to an emergency.

"If this person wanted a nine to five job he should not have become a paramedic."

The source added: "A couple of miniutes in a life or death situation is a very long time. Skimming off just a few seconds from an emergency call-out can save lives - that's why amublances are fitted with blue lights and sirens."

A spokesman for North East Ambulance Service said: "This incident was immediately reported to us by another member of staff and, as soon as we were notified, we acted to suspend a paramedic and an advanced technician from duty.

"We appointed a senior officer to carry out a full investigation of the incident and have notified the North East Strategic Health Authority, Stockton-on-Tees Teaching Primary Care Trust and the Health Professions Council of our actions.

"We have also been in touch with the family of the patient to give them our condolences and to keep them updated on developments.

"Patient care is our number one priority and we treat any action which falls short of the high standard expected of our staff extremely seriously."

Source: Telegraph
See all stories on this topic here

NHS pays for cosmetic surgery for 'road rage' killer Tracie Andrews

EXCLUSIVE by Justin Penrose, Crime Correspondent 6/06/2009

Jailed murderer's chin job costs the taxpayer £5,000

Road rage killer Tracie Andrews was let out of jail for four days – for thousands of pounds worth of cosmetic surgery.

Andrews, 40, tasted freedom when she had an operation to realign her protruding jaw and improve her looks.

News of the surgery and hospital stay has infuriated her victim’s family. The treatment would have cost the NHS about £5,000.

The killer – jailed for life for stabbing fiancé Lee Harvey to death then claiming he was killed by a road rage attacker – was taken by taxi to Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford on Tuesday.

Two days later she was spotted outside in a wheelchair. As our exclusive photos show, her once-blonde hair is now red and she has piled on the pounds.

She was with a prison officer but he used a mobile phone and walked 100 yards away from Andrews – who was not handcuffed – leaving her for about six minutes.

Andrews had the three-hour op to break and reset her lower jaw on Wednesday.

Next day she was wheeled to a surgeon at the unit who examined her for 20 minutes. She was then taken in to the car park while the prison warder answered his phone. She was staying in a private room at the hospital under the name Stacey Carter.

Andrews, who now calls herself Tia Carter and could be eligible for release in 2011, repeatedly stabbed 25-year-old Lee to death in his car in December 1996. They had stopped after an argument on the way to their flat in Worcester.

After his death she concocted a story that he had been murdered by a road rage maniac. Her moving appeal at a Press conference triggered a massive manhunt.

But it soon became obvious there was no “staring-eyed fat man” – it was Andrews who cut her fiancé’s throat and stabbed him 37 times.

She used a penknife believed to have been in the glove compartment of Mr Harvey’s car.

She was sentenced to a minimum of 14 years but has already started the process of being moved to an open prison.

The Sunday Mirror revealed last month that she has won a parole hearing that could downgrade her security status.

Lee Harvey’s mum Maureen said last night: “I am outraged that cosmetic surgery has been arranged for her.

“She might be able to change her looks to disguise herself but she will never be able to change the way she is inside. She is evil.”

A prison source said: “Questions have been asked as to why she has been allowed to have so much taxpayers’ cash to make her look better.

“She may be nearing release but that does not mean she should be allowed cosmetic surgery on the NHS.”

justin.penrose@sundaymirror.co.uk
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Full article here

Patients with suspected cancer forced to wait so NHS targets can be hit

Patients rushed to hospital with suspected cancer are having their treatment delayed so that managers can meet Government targets, an NHS investigation has found.

By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent
Published: 8:45AM BST 07 Jun 2009

People arriving at Accident and Emergency departments with symptoms which could indicate the aggressive spread of the disease are waiting weeks for diagnosis and treatment while “routine” cases are prioritised.

Hospital managers told researchers that treating desperately sick patients more quickly would “reflect badly” on their performance against Government cancer targets which only cover those referred to specialists by GPs.

Doctors, patients groups and politicians were appalled by what one described as a “breathtaking admission” which confirmed their “very worst fears” about how far the NHS target culture has gone in distorting clinical priorities.

Although most people with suspected cancer are referred to hospitals by their GPs, more than 30,000 people diagnosed with the disease each year are first alerted to tumours by violent symptoms, such as seizures, vomiting and jaundice, which cause such alarm that patients go straight to their local A&E departments.

The report by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, an official health service agency which issues advice to hospital managers, says that many of these emergency patients waited six weeks or longer for basic tests.

It said they were “often” not given the same priority as patients who had been referred by GPs, who were covered by two targets, ensuring that they see a specialist within two weeks, and start treatment, following diagnostic tests, within two months.

“As a result, they can end up with a very poor experience before finally receiving a diagnosis and the right care,” it warns.

The report, due to be published tomorrow added: “Many trusts recognised the need to get some patients in this group onto the same pathway as people on the cancer two week wait [target] but were concerned this would reflect badly on their cancer figures”.

Some A&E departments failed to recognise the risk of cancer in seriously ill patients. In cases where the disease was suspected, patients were sent home to wait six weeks or longer for diagnostic tests. Others waited weeks on wards before seeing a specialist or having scans, the report, which is endorsed by the Government’s cancer tsar, found.

Nigel Beasley, the NHS Institute’s lead for cancer, and head and neck surgeon from Nottingham University Hospitals said: “Targets are very effective, but they do have side-effects. The risk is that these patients are not being prioritised because of the focus on the two-week target for patients referred by GPs.”

He said anxious patients admitted as an emergency were often trapped in hospital for weeks waiting for scans, and to see a specialist, and should learn from good hospitals, who carried out investigations quickly, often using outpatients appointments.

Mr Beasley said: “Patients can be stuck in hospital for a long time, waiting for scans, and other diagnostic tests. Once they are in hospital, they can end up waiting two, three, or even four weeks before there is a diagnosis and any decision to treat.”

The admission about the effect Government targets were having on emergency cancer patients horrified clinicians and patients groups.

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley described it as “one of the clearest examples yet of how Labour’s tick-box targets are failing NHS patients”.

He said decisions about which patients should be seen first must be taken by doctors, based on the patient’s clinical needs, not by managers following Government diktats.

Katherine Murphy, from the Patients Association, said the report provided “breathtaking” evidence of a confidence trick being played on the public, repeatedly told that waiting times for patients with suspected cancer are falling, while desperate cases were forced to the back of the queue.

She said: “This confirms our very worst fears, and exposes the scandal of what pernicious targets are doing to patients. We have seen other targets being used in ways that damage patient care, but of everything we have seen, this really is the cruellest of the cruel”.

Leading cancer specialist Prof Karol Sikora said: “I think it is absolutely horrifying that hospital managers are playing around with targets that can delay treatment for people who may well be at an advanced stage of the disease.”

“I know of many cases where people who have been admitted to NHS hospitals as an emergency have languished for weeks before even seeing an oncologist,” added Prof Sikora, Medical Director of independent company CancerPartnersUK.

The British Medical Association said many trusts were bullying doctors into delaying urgent referrals.

Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the BMA’s consultants committee, said: “A number of our members have already expressed fears about the two-week cancer target, because it means all the cases referred by GPs are given the same priority, regardless of whether they are expected to be benign or high risk. When this same target is delaying patients who have been admitted as an emergency that is an even greater cause for concern”.

Several oncologists said they supported two-week waiting time targets for cancer patients referred by GPs, but called for the target to be widened to include all patients.

Ian Beaumont, from charity Bowel Cancer UK said it “beggared belief” that anyone would value statistics over efforts to save lives.

Dr Jane Maher, chief medial officer at Macmillan Cancer Relief described the revelation in the report as worrying, but said the biggest obstacle to getting the right care for patients admitted to hospitals as an emergency was getting the right diagnosis, as cases were often complex, meaning cancer could be mistaken for other conditions.

Among those who have experienced the problem is Melissa Matthews was 28 when she went to the Accident and Emergency department of her local hospital.

For several days, she had been suffering abdominal pain which had left her feeling so uncomfortable that she was unable to eat. She told her family doctor, who advised her not to worry, unless she began vomiting, in which case she should go immediately to A&E.

When she began being sick, her partner took her to the casualty unit of Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. The couple mentioned concerns about bowel cancer, having recently watched a programme about its symptoms, but the doctor reassured her: “You are far too young to have bowel cancer; when the blood tests come back they will show that”.

The tests did not indicate a problem; Miss Matthews was sent home to Norwich and told she was probably suffering from irritable bowel syndrome.

But the pain and vomiting continued. A week later, when she was unable to even swallow water, she returned to A&E, and was admitted to a ward for five days, but sent home once more.

One week later, after she collapsed in agony at home, she was admitted to hospital again. This time, X-rays revealed a blockage. During an eight-hour operation, surgeons found a tumour so large they were forced to remove her womb and 36 inches of her bowel.

The blood tests which Miss Matthews had undergone in A&E, she later found out, were not a clear indicator of bowel cancer, or its absence after all.

Six months of chemotherapy followed Miss Matthews’ operation, after which she was given the all-clear. However, since then the cancer has returned. On Tuesday, Miss Matthews, now 30, will undergo a second operation to remove a tumour.

The mother of two girls, aged 11 and 13, says her focus now is on survival.

“I don’t feel angry about this any more, my concern is about what happens next, but I did feel very frustrated, and frightened. I thought going to A&E was the safest place to be, but I was just fobbed off”.

A hospital spokesman said patients were encouraged to complain if they were not satisfied with their care, and added that bowel cancer was rare in patients of Miss Matthews’ age.

More than 4,900 people have backed The Sunday Telegraph’s Heal Our Hospitals campaign, which is calling for a review of hospital targets to make sure they work to improve quality of care.
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Source: Telegraph

NHS TELLS BOURNEMOUTH WAR VETERAN HE CAN'T HAVE £30K OPERATION

By Joanna Codd

He worked hard for most of his life and spent six years fighting for his country in World War Two. Only now, aged 96, has Charles Coutts asked for anything in return.

The Burma campaign veteran needs a life-saving heart operation, and although doctors in London say he is a perfect candidate for a new procedure to replace a faulty valve, NHS Bournemouth and Poole has refused to foot the £30,000 bill.

“I’m not a moaner or whiner or a grabber. I’ve always been active, I’ve never had a major illness or operation, and I’m in generally good health apart from this valve,” said Mr Coutts, of Queens Park, Bournemouth.

“For the last six months I’ve been existing on tenterhooks thinking I’m going to have the operation, then being told I’m not because they’re not paying the money.

“I have deteriorated. I have no strength. I have to struggle to get off the chair and I have falls. It’s depressing not to be able to do anything unless somebody helps you. I don’t want to continue my life like this.”

Widower Mr Coutts was diagnosed as having a narrowing of his aortic valve after suffering an angina attack in Spain last year. When he returned home, he was referred to St Thomas’ Hospital in London.

After several days of scans and tests, he was assessed as ideal for transcatheter aortic valve implantation. The procedure involves inserting a replacement valve through a tube instead of undergoing open heart surgery.

Mr Coutts’ son Douglas pointed out that the procedure had been successfully carried out on people of 99 and 100. “It’s not a question of age. If my father lived in London or Kent, there’s a blanket go-ahead.”

And friend Jane Arnold said: “It’s a death sentence if he doesn’t have this done.”

Mr Coutts was born in the slums of the East End of London, the tenth surviving child in his family. After joining the Hampshire Regiment, he was commissioned into the Somerset Light Infantry, rising to the rank of Major. He spent most of his working life in the drapery trade, ending up as a director of the House of Fraser. He still lives independently.

A spokesperson for NHS Bournemouth and Poole said: “This is a highly specialised, complex and evolving procedure that is not currently routinely available in Bournemouth and Poole and is only considered for those too ill or frail to undergo open heart surgery.

“National guidance makes clear that although there is some evidence of short-term efficacy, there is little evidence about long-term outcomes.

“There is the potential for serious complications, which include the need for emergency cardiac surgery.

“Individuals may request specific funding through demonstrating to the primary care trust that they have good clinical reasons for being treated as an exceptional case. The PCT has not supported any such applications.”

Factfile

NHS trusts have a legal obligation to provide treatments that have been approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

But the one recommended for Mr Coutts is classed as an “interventional procedure”.

NICE makes no ruling on whether or not these should be funded.

This is an apparent loophole in attempts to end the so-called “postcode lottery” of access to new drugs or treatment varying according to where you live. A Department of Health spokesperson explained: “In the absence of NICE guidance, primary care trusts have to make decisions locally on the basis of the available evidence. The fact that there is no NICE guidance is not an excuse to refuse funding for a drug or treatment.

“For the first time, the NHS Constitution gives patients an explicit right to expect, where NICE guidance is not available, local decisions on the funding of treatments for individual patients to be made rationally, following a proper consideration of the evidence.

“If the local PCT decides not to fund, then it should explain that decision. To underpin this right, we have issued directions that require NHS organisations to put in place clear and transparent arrangements for local decision-making on exceptional funding requests. The directions came into force on April 1.”

Source: Daily Echo
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Articles here about the NHS £1.8bn cash surplus

'We demand justice': The families at the heart of Gosport's hospital scandal

Nearly 100 deaths at a hospital in Gosport have provoked an outcry from many of the patients' families, who believe the cases are suspicious. Official investigations have established little. The Independent on Sunday was the first to make arguments for a public inquiry and continues to pressurise the authorities to find out what really happened. Beyond the headlines, the relatives are struggling to uncover the whole truth behind their parents' final days... Nina Lakhani hears their stories

In 1991, nurses working night shifts at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in Hampshire were troubled. Over the previous few months, the number of elderly patients dying under their care had been mounting. Two nurses at the community hospital (which treats elderly patients in need of rehabilitation or sometimes terminal care, in collaboration with GPs) raised the alarm to senior hospital staff and the Royal College of Nursing. They believed the deaths started after patients were given diamorphine (a powerful painkiller) via a syringe driver (which delivers drugs via a tube and needle, and is traditionally used for very sick patients who need constant medication but find it difficult to swallow tablets). Giving these drugs, while sometimes necessary for chronic pain, can cause serious side-effects, such as difficulty with breathing. These are more likely to occur in those patients not in pain: breathing can stop altogether.

Letters were written, internal meetings were held, but eventually the matter was closed by the hospital trust. A GP attached to Gosport, Dr Jane Barton, was responsible for prescribing drugs to many of the elderly patients. She continued working in the rehabilitation and terminal care wards.

The death at the hospital of 91-year-old Gladys Richards in 1998 triggered the first NHS, and two police, investigations after her daughter, Gillian Mackenzie, refused to accept she had died from natural causes. The police investigations were later found to have been incompetent and led to a third – lasting four years – into at least 92 deaths at the hospital. Thirteen were categorised as the "most serious" by an eminent team of medical experts led by Professor Robert ' Forrest, the forensic toxicologist who gave evidence at the Harold Shipman trial, but no charges were brought.

Full article here

Also from The Independent: NHS 'loses' thousands of medical records

The personal medical records of tens of thousands of people have been lost by the NHS in a series of grave data security leaks. Between January and April this year, 140 security breaches were reported within the NHS – more than the total number from inside central Government and all local authorities combined.

Why is the NHS killing so many with drugs?

By Daniel Martin
Last updated at 12:50 AM on 20th May 2009

An extraordinary rise in the number of patients killed by drugs given out by the Health Service has led to calls for an investigation.

The figure has more than doubled since Labour came to power, rising from 520 in 1998 to 1,299 last year.

Official figures also show that the number of such deaths last year was up by more than a quarter on the figure of 1,030 recorded in 2007.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb, who obtained the statistics following a parliamentary question, said: 'The Government needs to urgently investigate this extraordinary rise.

'The public needs to know why these adverse reactions are happening more frequently and why the trend appears to be increasing so much.

'Patient safety is being compromised. Ministers must ensure that better information on prescription drugs is available for patients and doctors.'

Some experts blamed the increase on failures in the training of hospital doctors and Labour's decision to hand greater prescribing powers to nurses.

The figures show that in 2008, a total of 25,424 reports of adverse reactions to drugs - both fatal and non-fatal - were made to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the government organisation in charge of drug safety.

They were up by 17 per cent on 2007 and by 41 per cent in a decade.

Of these patients, 4,487 had to stay in hospital for several days following side effects from medication - around the same as in 2007 but up by more than 50 per cent on 1998.

The figures mainly cover drugs handed out on prescription, but they also relate to over-the-counter and herbal medicines.

Peter Walsh, of pressure group Action Against Medical Accidents, said: 'There are far too many complications resulting in harm or death. These numbers must be reduced, and it must be in the gift of a modern NHS to get them down.

'The true figure will undoubtedly be much higher, because not all incidents are reported [by hospitals and GPs]. And in many cases doctors simply do not know what caused a sudden deterioration or a death - the drugs or another cause.
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Full article in Daily Mail

Dying girl 'called a drama queen by medics' - inquest

Apr 21 2009 by Andy Richards, Birmingham Mail

A TEENAGE girl who died in agonising pain a week after being admitted to hospital was accused of being a “drama queen” by medical staff, an inquest was told.

Sian Jones, aged 15, was admitted to a children’s ward at Birmingham’s Heartlands Hospital with stomach pains on August 6, 2007.

The teenager, from Stirchley. died of perienteritis – a serious infection that inflames the lining of the stomach and intestines – on August 13. Her sister Sarah Jones, aged 22, claimed: “The staff told my father on August 9 that there was nothing physically wrong with her and that it was all psychological, that she was a drama queen.”

Sian’s family claimed she was in “agonising pain”, unable to walk and was being fed and wheeled around in a chair by family members.

They alleged that they were told by medical staff that the pain from the undiagnosed perienteritis was brought on by problems at home.

Sian’s father Andrew had been fighting leukaemia for 18 months when his daughter was admitted to hospital, and has since died from the illness.

The inquest heard that when Sian was admitted doctors suspected that she was suffering from appendicitis.

They removed her appendix on August 7, but her pain grew steadily worse.

She was sent for scans and given pain relief, but doctors missed a number of tell-tale signs of her deteriorating condition, the inquest was told.

They attributed the discomfort to post-operation pain and failed to connect the signs of swelling in her stomach, problems with her urine, irregular blood sample results and problems with her temperature, heart rate and blood pressure.

She was finally sent to intensive care on August 11 when her condition worsened and she died in the early hours of August 13 of multi-organ failure, which was brought on by the infection.

Sarah Jones and her aunt, Susan, gave evidence yesterday at the inquest in Sutton Coldfield, which will hear from 26 witnesses.

She said: “I was very close to my sister and it became more and more difficult to see her in the latter half of the week. She was in agonising pain and would scream and cry constantly.

“My father had spent a long time in hospital and had given lots of blood samples. He kept asking about the results.

“She was only showered once whilst she was in the ward and her sheets were not changed once. It was up to me and my dad to clean her, to brush her teeth and to feed her because she was not able to do it herself.

“She even rang me at 3am begging me to go and see her. She would just want me to stroke her hair, she was in so much pain.

“I even had to ask for a wheelchair to take her to the toilet on two occasions, because by now she could not walk or even stand up.

“On the second occasion we came out to find that the chair had gone, so I had to wheel her back in weighing scales.

“My parents had split up some time before and our father was terminally ill, but Sian and I had no problems.”

Dr Ahmad had the most contact with Sian before her death. She had been a junior doctor at the hospital for two years and had started her surgical training at Heartlands just three days before Sian was admitted.

Under questioning from coroner Aidan Cotter she said she had not been made aware of any wheelchair use or calls to relatives in the middle of the night.

She said the surgical team, including two more senior surgeons who are now both working in Australia, attributed the continuing pain to post operation pain from the appendix procedure.

She added: “With the benefit of hindsight I can see that she was getting worse, but at the time it was not so obvious.

“In hindsight all the factors were viewed independently and not together.

“The team thought there was nothing amiss surgically and had been falsely reassured by a CT (x-ray) scan and a review from a paediatric doctor.

“The emotional aspect had been raised to me by my seniors and psychological issues were raised in a conversation with her father.”

(Proceeding)

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Source: Birmingham Mail

The NHS killed my mother: MP Nigel Evans reveals how a routine operation ended in horror

The last, harrowing moments of my mother's life will live for ever in the collective memory of my family. An 86-year-old lady of infinite grace and dignity, she had the most agonising of deaths.

Lying bewildered and distressed in an NHS hospital bed, her body racked with pain, she kept desperately grabbing at the air with her hands as if she was drowning, while all the time being violently ill.

'It was torture, worse than a horror film. We felt so helpless,' says my sister, Louise, who witnessed the tragic scene. But it should never have been like this. My dear mother should have been able to depart this earth in serenity and peace, not forced to go through such a traumatic experience.

The reasons for her ordeal can, I believe, be found in a mixture of neglect, incompetence and indifference shown by the NHS.

For my mother died of the notorious superbug Clostridium difficile, known as C.diff, which she must have contracted while undergoing hospital treatment in Swansea. If she had been cared for properly, if the ward had been cleaner or greater urgency had been shown in handling her case, then this tragedy might never have happened.

The NHS is often a saviour, but it can also be a killer. What happened to my mother is all too common in the health service. There were 8,324 deaths from C.diff in 2007, with most of the victims elderly people.

That statistic is too high for a 21stcentury healthcare system in an advanced industrialised country. Moreover, an estimated 59,000 people in this country are disabled or die because of poor hygiene or care in our hospitals.

Even the essentials, such as providing patients with sufficient fluids or cleaning bathrooms properly, are neglected. That is why I am campaigning for drastic improvements in the basics of healthcare in the NHS, so deaths from C.diff and other superbugs can be eliminated.

I have demanded an investigation into the circumstances surrounding my mother's death at the Singleton Hospital in Swansea, but I also want the lessons of this episode to be learned much more widely, so that Britain has a health service that meets the needs of its users, not one that carries the risk of killing them.

My mother's case encapsulates the best and worst of the NHS. On one hand, she had the highest quality treatment from a leading surgeon after she was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. On the other, when she returned to hospital for a routine operation - unconnected with the cancer - she received nothing like the same expert, attentive care.

That is almost certainly why she contracted C.diff and why medical staff were too slow in responding to symptoms. It seems as if there is a deep contradiction within the NHS, pulling the service in two directions.

We have phenomenal advances in drugs, medical technology and surgery, which can conquer-disease and prolong life in a way that would have been revolutionary only two decades ago. Yet, at the same time, we have abandoned the most basic standards of hygiene and care.

My mother deserved better from the NHS. Determined, kind and diligent, she was a pillar of strength, not just to my family but to the community in her area of Swansea, where she and my late father ran a newsagent's shop.

Full article can be read on Daily Mail

Teresa Cooper, 41, who blames drugging at Kendall House for the fact her three children born with defects

Jenny Booth

The practice of sedating troublesome teenagers in care homes was today being linked to birth defects after ten women came forward to complain that their children had been born damaged.

As teenagers at the Church of England-run Kendall House in Gravesend, Kent, the ten were routinely restrained with huge doses of tranquillisers and other drugs.

Sedating children was allegedly commonplace in care homes during the 1970s and 1980s, although the levels of drugging at Kendall House,a home for girls with problems, appear to have been unusual.

Now fears are surfacing that the drugging may have impaired the girls' chances of having healthy babies. The alarm was raised by Teresa Cooper, who left the home in 1984 at 16, and has since written Trust No One - a book about her experiences.

Ms Cooper's three children all have birth defects. Her eldest son was born with respiratory difficulties, her second son is blind and has learning difficulties, and her daughter was born with a cleft palate and a short lower jaw.

Files from Kendall House show that she was given medication at least 1,248 times over a 32-month period, including anti-psychotic drugs intended for schizophrenics, drugs to counter side-effects, sedatives and anti-depressants, the BBC reported today. The dosages were high - she was given up to 10 times the current recommended dose of Valium.

Since her book was published, Ms Cooper says, nine further former residents of Kendall House, who all underwent similar drugging, have been in touch with her to report having children with brain tumours, learning difficulties and cleft palate.

Ofsted, the schools and childcare inspectorate, says that hundreds of children may have been drugged in the care system throughout the 70s and 80s, subjecting them to possible health risks.

Mike Lindsay, national co-ordinator for Children’s Rights Alliance for England, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Using drugs to control the behaviour of children was perfectly acceptable as far as their own professional understanding at that time went."

In 1980, Kendall House became the focus of national controversy when the levels of drugs being prescribed by psychiatrist Dr Mahenthiran Perinpanayagam were revealed in a TV documentary.

Healthy girls in his care were given pills designed for schizophrenics, psychotics and Parkinson's sufferers, and the teenagers were often held down and forced to take them, the documentary said.

By 1984 a report into the home by the Department of Health and Social Security was scathing about the drugs given to the girls. Inspector Dr Dorothy Black said she was extremely concerned about "storage, monitoring and administration of psychotropic drugs", adding: "The home needs close and urgent attention."

Full article here: Times Online

Review into allegations that Jersey's version of Harold Shipman killed patients ten years ago

Jersey Police said it will review an investigation into allegations that a former nurse killed more than a dozen severely ill patients.

Allegations were first made against the staff nurse, who cannot be named for legal reasons, at Jersey General Hospital a decade ago and a police investigation was triggered, but it was later dropped on legal advice.

Today, States of Jersey Police said the case files will be reviewed and key people involved will be interviewed.

The allegations include evidence from a colleague who believed the nurse was determined to end the lives of severely ill patients by adjusting their drug intake.

According to the leaked report, the average death rate between 1998 and 1999 on the ward concerned was 4.5 deaths per month.

But in February 1999 there were eight deaths in four nights when the nurse was on duty, and a further five deaths in March also when the nurse was on shift.

The nurse is no longer employed at the hospital.
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Source: Belfast Telegraph
BBC News: Nurse 'gave patient suicide tip'
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Full 'leaked' report here: Senator Stuart Syvret

Jersey's version of Harold Shipman: Mass murder in NHS gets covered up the Jersey way

The following post is written by Senator Stuart Syvret

IN THE JERSEY HOSPITAL.

A Death-Delivering Maniac?

Jersey’s Then Attorney General Michael Birt Pulls the Plug On The Police Investigation.

So it begins.

It is with trepidation I publish the material below – for reasons which will become plain within the first few paragraphs.

The document I publish here was tabled before the court in London, as one item of evidence in the Applicant’s bundles.

To be clear – this went before the two judges – and even then, they chose to disregard the public interest – instead asserting that we should take up these matters with the Jersey justice apparatus.

Notwithstanding the fact that the same administration of justice apparatus was responsible for covering-up what is revealed.

The document I publish is a secret Police report from 1999.

It is self-explanatory.

The subject of this report – one Andrew Charles Marolia – came to the attention of the Police because of – comparatively – minor offences involving the stealing of drugs from the Jersey General Hospital.

He was charged with these comparatively minor offences, pleaded guilty – and was sentenced to two years unsupervised probation.

I was a member of the then Health & Social Services Committee, and later became President of the Committee in December, 1999.

Marolia was sacked from the General Hospital in response to the comparatively minor offences.

However, being a former military Nurse, who has served in the first Gulf war – he found a ready stream of politicians and others to lobby on his behalf to be allowed to be re-employed in the Hospital.

On one occasion he appeared before the H & SS Committee to make a formal appeal.

It was rejected because of the conviction for the minor offences.

Still, I continued to be lobbied by politicians and others, who wanted the Committee to employ Marolia again.

I raised the issue of this lobbying in a face-to-face meeting with the then Chief executive of Health & Social Services, Graham Jennings.

I did not want Marolia to be re-employed, and Jennings was certainly of the same opinion.

He explained that Marolia was obviously a wholly unsuitable individual to be in health care. Jennings went on to say that, in any event, we couldn’t be expected to take Marolia back even if we wanted to – as he was deeply unpopular with other staff – who were “mounting a vendetta against him”. To illustrate the extremity and unreasonableness of the “personality clash”, Jennings said to me, “a member of staff has even suggested that he killed people. It’s utter rubbish. But don’t worry – the Police have investigated the matter, and whilst they were too gung-ho and wanted to start exhuming the non-cremated bodies, the Attorney General Michael Birt has told them to drop it, because he doesn’t believe their are any grounds for securing a conviction.”

At the time, I took this at face value. After all, if your professional Health Chief Executive tells you this – and relays to you the fact that no less an authority than the Attorney General has dismissed the allegations – who is a mere politician to doubt them?

But – some years later – around 2005, perhaps – a conscientious member of staff at H & SS leaked this Police report to me.

As is clear from the Report, Jennings had a copy – but he never told my Committee or me of its existence.

It took a whistle-blower to reveal it.

When I read the report you are about to read, I was speechless.

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Read the full report here
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Related links:
Jersey: Corrupt cesspit
AC Associated Content
Allit, Shipman and...?

Cure the NHS

'Cure the NHS' group was created by people who have lost relatives or were victims of poor care and support within mid Staffordshire Foundation trust Hospitals at Stafford and Cannock. Poor management and lack of suitably trained and dedicated staff are to blame and we are committed to change the management and ethos of the trust so we may all feel safe and secure if admitted to the Hospitals.

Cure the NHS

'Shocking' treatment at Staffordshire hospital

Patients admitted for emergency treatment at an NHS Trust were subjected to “shocking and appalling” care that included untrained receptionists carrying out medical checks and heart monitors being switched off, a report concluded today.

The Healthcare Commission, the NHS standards watchdog, said that evidence suggested that as many as 400 deaths at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust could have been prevented and may have been the result of poor care.

The commission’s investigation, based on more than 300 interviews and an examination of more than 1,000 documents, uncovered inadequately trained staff who were too few in number, junior doctors left in charge at night, and patients left without food, drink or medication as their operations were repeatedly cancelled.

Some patients were in pain or needed the toilet, sat in soiled bedding for several hours at a time and were not given their regular medication, the commission heard.

Receptionists with no medical training were expected to assess patients coming into A&E.

Describing the episodes as a “gross and terrible breach of trust of the patients the NHS seeks to serve”, Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, said the report showed there had been a “complete failure of leadership” at the trust.

He added: “I’m proud of the NHS but actually I’m really saddened by this report.”

Patients accepted there were risks involved in treatments and procedures, but they did not accept that those people who should be helping them would let them down and that the system caring for them would be faulty, he said.

Earlier this month the trust’s chief executive, Martin Yeates, and chairman, Toni Brisby, resigned.

The Healthcare Commission’s chairman, Sir Ian Kennedy, said the investigation followed concerns about unusually high death rates at the trust.

Although it is not clear how many deaths could have been avoided, the Healthcare Commission said that patients undoubtedly suffered as a result of lapses in the standard of care.

Those in charge of the trust, which runs Stafford Hospital and Cannock Chase Hospital, failed to give an adequate explanation of these figures, prompting the commission to launch a full investigation.

“The resulting report is a shocking story,” Sir Ian said. “Our report tells a story of appalling standards of care and chaotic systems for looking after patients.

“These are words I have not previously used in any report.

“There were inadequacies in almost every stage of caring for patients. There was no doubt that patients will have suffered and some of them will have died as a result.”

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, said he had requested a further full independent review of the Stafford Hospital by Sir George Alberti, national clinical director for Emergency Care, to ensure all lessons had been learnt.

“On behalf of the Government and the NHS I would like to apologise to the patients and families of patients who have suffered because of the poor standards of care at Stafford Hospital.

“There was a complete failure of management to address serious problems and monitor performance. This led to a totally unacceptable failure to treat emergency patients safely and with dignity.”

David Kidney, the MP for Stafford, in whose constituency the hospital is based, told The Times that management were likely to have cut services to deal with its budget deficit.

"Clearly, the hospital was too enthusiastic in cutting back," he said. "People have died because they did not get the care that they should have done in their local hospital.

"Now the chief executive has stepped down and the chair of the trust resigned, we have to make sure that we change the culture of the place."

Julie Bailey was so concerned about the care being given to her 86-year-old mother Bella that she and her relatives slept in a chair at her hospital bedside for eight weeks.

“What we saw in those eight weeks will haunt us for the rest of our lives,” she said. “We saw patients drinking out of flower vases, they were so thirsty.

“There were patients wandering around the hospital and patients fighting. It was continuous through the night.

“Patients were screaming out in pain because you just could not get pain relief.

“Patients would fall out of bed and we would have to go hunting for staff. There was such a lack of staff.

“It was like a Third World country hospital. It was an absolute disgrace.”

Ms Bailey, from Stafford, launched a campaign group, called Cure the NHS, following her mother’s death to encourage a full inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

“We had to stand outside the hospital for 14 months to get to this point,” she said.

“The neglect is still happening. We are still taking calls from patients on wards.”

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Source: Times Online

'Grandma came out of hospital weighing six stone'

'Shocking' treatment at hospital may have killed 400
Prince Charles: Britain faces dementia catastrophe

Staffordshire hospital: What went wrong? Criticisms and recommendations in full

NHS children's staff lack training

Many health professionals treating children in the NHS do not have the latest training and information on a number of vital issues, a report has warned.

According to the Healthcare Commission, trusts are failing to pass on advances in basic training surrounding paediatric resuscitation, pain management and child protection.

The study found 29% of trusts did not regularly update staff training on child protection.

A staggering 74% of trusts were found to have an insufficient number of staff trained in specialist paediatric life support, while 11% had got worse since the Commission's last report in 2005/06.

And surgeons and anaesthetists were also losing their skills, with 63% of trusts failing to ensure the professionals were doing the recommended number of operations on children to maintain their training.

Only 59% of trusts could boost the basic level of one nurse per shift in emergency and day care wards trained to manage children's pain.

The report's authors wrote: "It is of great concern that the findings from the follow-up review show a consistently low level in the uptake of training in paediatric life support among key staff, while a high proportion of surgeons and anaesthetists carrying out procedures on children still need to have more work experience to properly maintain their specific skills."

Copyright © Press Association 2009

Healthcare Commission

Have your say on NHS services

People are being offered a chance to help shape the way NHS services are delivered. Health Reporter HELEN RAE finds out more.

AN OPPORTUNITY to make a difference to the health of the region is being presented through the role of non-executive director on the board of Newcastle Primary Care Trust.

The role offers the chance for the candidate to put their talents to use by making a positive difference to the lives of people in the community by tackling issues like obesity, smoking, alcohol, cancer and sexual health.

The position is open to people who have gained senior level expertise in the private, public or voluntary sectors with senior management experience including one or more of the following: commercial or business expertise: bringing experience of strategic planning, financial, risk and performance management and legal expertise.

An interest in community health services is also desirable.

Gina Tiller, chairwoman of Newcastle PCT board, said: “This is an exciting opportunity for someone to become involved in making a difference to the health of their local community in Newcastle.

“We believe that the best boards are those that reflect the communities they serve.

“We particularly want to hear from women and people from black and minority ethnic communities who are able to make a real contribution to this organisation.”

Preference will be given to candidates who live in Newcastle, or who have strong connections with the area.

Those applying for the role will need to demonstrate a range of competencies required to contribute effectively at board level including strategic thinking, team working and excellent communication skills.

The time commitment is typically just two and a half days each month and remuneration is £7,765 per annum.

Newcastle PCT values and promotes diversity and is committed to equality of opportunity for all and appointments made on merit.

The closing date for applications is Wednesday, March 5 and interviews will be held on March 30.

For more information log on to the website at www.appointments.org.uk or www.strictlyboardroom.co.uk or call 0870 240 3802, quoting the reference NE9557 for an information pack.
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Source: Evening Chronicle
More articles from Helen Rae

Save our Blood Service

Save our Blood Service

NHS safety blunders cost patients' lives

Scalding hot bath water, unsafe windows and even potholes outside a hospital have claimed the lives of NHS patients, an official dossier has revealed.

By Beezy Marsh
Last Updated: 11:47AM GMT 17 Jan 2009

Others have suffered injury due to collapsing bed rails or been exposed to dangerous bacteria including tuberculosis because of a lack of basic safeguards.

The toll of shoddy care is exposed in official details of enforcement action against the NHS by the Government's Health and Safety Executive.

The HSE, which upholds stringent standards to protect the public and the workforce, has acted against the NHS on more than 300 occasions in the past four years.

In 40 of the most serious cases, covering a 10-year period, the NHS was taken to court by the HSE and given fines totalling nearly £600,000, paid from the public purse.

The litany of avoidable fatalities and injuries includes:

*The death of a pensioner who developed serious burns after lying against a scalding hot radiator on a ward.

*Two cases, including a fatality, involving patients being put in boiling hot baths.

*The death of a hospital visitor who fell down a pothole in a hospital driveway.

*The deaths of two mental health patients who fell from hospital windows in separate incidents.

*Two further cases in which vulnerable patients suffered back and ankle injuries after falling from hospital windows which were not fitted with proper safety catches.

*A frail patient who suffered a broken hip after a bedrail collapsed.

*Patients being exposed to legionella because of poorly maintained water systems, and to live tuberculosis bacteria, after it was dropped in a laboratory with a faulty ventilation system.

The details, held on the HSE website, follow the latest data from the National Patient Safety Agency which show the number of patients killed by hospital blunders has risen by 60 per cent in just two years.

Patients' groups said there could be no excuse for such an appalling safety record in the NHS.

Katharine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, said: "It is totally unacceptable for patients to be suffering injuries or be exposed to danger simply by going into hospital.

"These poor practices should not be allowed and the blame must lie with weak management of the hospitals."

The HSE served 323 official notices to the NHS between 2004 and 2008, including 23 prohibition notices where work had to stop immediately because of the risk to life.

There were a further 39 cases which led to successful prosecutions.

These include the death of a mental health patient who fell from a window at Birch Hill Hospital in Rochdale in 2004 and the death of a vulnerable patient who fell 12 feet (3.6m) from a window at the Forth Valley Primary Care Trust in Stirlingshire in 2003.

South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust was fined £7,500 for the death of a visitor who was going home from Springfield Hospital when he fell down a deep hole in the hospital driveway, which had been caused by a vehicle uprooting a metal post.

He was taken to A&E with a fractured wrist but subsequently died in hospital after the incident in 2005.

Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge was fined £3,000 over the death of a frail pensioner who suffered fatal burns after lying next to an unguarded radiator in 1999.

In another tragic incident in the same year, a severely disabled patient at Prudhoe Hospital in Northumberland died of burns after being placed in a boiling hot bath by an inexperienced care worker.
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Complete article: Telegraph.co.uk

Terminally ill pensioner left in hospital bathroom for 12 hours

A terminally ill pensioner was treated in a hospital bathroom and left for 12 hours because the ward was too overcrowded, it has been revealed. These shocking pictures taken by relatives show 79-year-old Gladys Joynes lying in bed in the squalid makeshift ward in the Royal Liverpool Hospital. They have described the situation was an 'affront to human dignity'. Mrs Joynes, who is in the late stages of Alzheimer's disease, was taken off her drip when the machine's batteries ran out. Pensioner Gladys Joynes lies in her makeshift ward in a hospital bathroom. It could not be plugged in because there were no sockets in the bathroom, which contained a foul-smelling bath, a commode and an overflowing litter bin. Staff had to place Mrs Joynes's tray of food on the floor because there was nowhere else.

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

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. It was one of a number of horrific cases where the NHS fatally failed patients with learning difficulties, a health watchdog is expected to rule later this month.

Complete article here

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.

Critics say quality of NHS care has suffered as doctors and nurses come under pressure to meet Government waiting time targets.

The sharp rise is also down to the fact that more trusts have started to record medical errors - revealing a death toll which in previous years remained hidden under the carpet.

But experts say the true toll is certain to be even higher, because many hospitals still do not record all of the 'patient safety incidents' - meaning that lessons which could have been learned are lost.

In October last year, the Patients Association warned that one in every 300 NHS patients were killed because of medical blunder.

The latest figures, uncovered by the Liberal Democrats, show that 385 died last year due to botched operations and 156 because scans were read wrongly or patients incorrectly diagnosed.

Full article: Mail Online

NHS paid up to £188 an hour to agency staff

By Michael Savage, Political Correspondent
Saturday, 3 January 2009

NHS organisations have been accused of paying agency staff hugely inflated rates of pay after new figures showed one consultant anaesthetist had been paid £188 an hour, the equivalent of a £366,000 salary.

The pay rates, secured by the Conservative Party under the Freedom of Information Act, also revealed large bills for managerial staff. A senior manager at Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust (PCT) was paid £157 an hour, the equivalent of a £306,000 salary.

Wandsworth PCT paid a strategic commissioning manager £147 per hour, while an accident and emergency doctor drafted in by Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust was paid £167 an hour.

Many other agency workers were found to have been paid an hourly rate higher than that of the chief executive of the NHS, David Nicholson, who received £220,000 last year.

The figures also revealed that some agencies take a large cut of their workers' pay, suggesting great inefficiency in temporary staffing in the NHS. Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust paid a nurse £116 per hour last year, but the worker's agency took 43 per cent of that.

The shadow Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, said: "Labour's dithering and chaotic, short-term planning has let down NHS staff. Some stability for them is the least we would have expected from the billions that the Government has poured into the NHS.

"It's incredible that agency staff can be paid such high hourly rates when jobs are being cut. This is typical of the waste that's occurred under this Labour Government."

The NHS spent almost £800m on agency workers in 2006-07.

But a spokesman for the Department of Health said it was in a "good place" on spending on agency staff, having reduced the bill from 5.5 per cent of its pay budget in 2004 to 3.2 per cent last year. He added: "The NHS Purchasing and Supplies Agency uses the NHS's buying power to negotiate lower pay rates with agencies."

Source: The Independent

Ambulance crew 'let patient die'

By Geneviève Roberts
Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Two Ambulance workers have been arrested on suspicion of neglecting a dying man.

They were detained after detectives were given a tape recording of them in the dying patient's house, in which they were allegedly heard discussing not bothering to try to revive him.

The two men, aged 35 and 44, both employees of South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Trust, had been sent to the home of a disabled man, Barry Baker, who dialled 999 saying he thought he was having a heart attack.

Ambulance controllers kept Mr Baker, from Brighton, talking on the phone as they ordered the paramedic and ambulance technician to get to him.

But the 59-year-old, who lived alone, collapsed unconscious while talking on the phone, leaving the line open to the control centre as he lay on the floor.

Minutes later, dispatch centre staff heard their crew enter the house, making disparaging comments about the state of the home. A police source said the crew were then heard discussing Mr Baker and saying "words the effect that he was not worth saving".

Both men have been suspended and bailed until next month while a police investigation is carried out. No charges have yet been made. A police source said: "Apparently, the paramedics' first reaction was to comment on the untidy and unkempt state of the house. Then they are heard to comment on seeing Mr Baker and saying that it was not worth bothering to try to carry out resuscitation to try to save him.

"They then are heard discussing what to tell ambulance control and decide to say that he was already dead when they arrived.

"Obviously the crew did not realise the phone was still connected and the 999 call was all recorded on tape."

"The controllers were so shocked they contacted senior managers and the police were called in."
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Source: The Independent

NHS doctor Bilal Abdulla found guilty of terror campaign

The NHS doctor who tried to murder thousands of people in the London and Glasgow car bombings had been part of a terrorist cell in Iraq, counter-terrorism sources have told The Times.

Bilal Abdulla came to Britain to open a “new front” in the Islamist jihad after he had been refused permission to carry out a suicide attack in Baghdad.

The car bombs he tried to detonate outside the Tiger, Tiger nightclub and at Glasgow airport were the first terrorist attacks in Britain to have been inspired – but not directed — by al-Qaeda in Iraq. Previous Islamist plots have had connections to al-Qaeda and Kashmiri extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Abdulla, a 29-year-old Iraqi born in Aylesbury, showed no emotion as he was convicted yesterday at Woolwich Crown Court of conspiracy to murder and cause explosions. He faces life imprisonment and will be sentenced today.

Full article here

£1.7bn NHS surplus 'should have been spent on patients'

The £1.7bn surplus made by the NHS in England in 2007-08 has come under fire from parliament's spending watchdog.

Edward Leigh, chairman of the public accounts committee, said last night that at least part of the money should have been spent on patients who were denied access to life-saving drugs or were provided with low-quality care.

It was reasonable for the health service to build up a contingency reserve, but the 2007-08 surplus was twice what NHS chiefs had planned, he added.

Leigh, the Tory MP for Gainsborough, was responding to a joint study by the National Audit Office and Audit Commission, which concluded that the surplus "reflected good use of resources rather than a failure to deliver healthcare".

The auditors said the NHS had made good progress in meeting national healthcare targets, including reducing waiting times and hospital acquired infections.

Steve Bundred, chief executive of the Audit Commission, said: "The surplus is equivalent to about one week's funding for the whole NHS. The organisations in the NHS are performing better financially and this surplus has created an element of certainty for financial planning that has not existed in recent years. This is especially reassuring given current financial pressures throughout the economy."

Tim Burr, head of the National Audit Office, said: "The surplus was generated through good financial management: NHS bodies delivered more cost savings than expected while still delivering against targets and improving the quality of healthcare. But better forecasting of the outcome could enable resources to be deployed more flexibly in-year."

Leigh, whose committee supervises the NAO, was more critical. He said: "The surplus represents a large amount of money that could have been spent on NHS patients and wasn't. While national targets were met, there are still examples of local organisations which are falling below standard, both medical and financial, and which might have benefited from additional cash.

"The Department of Health does not plan for the NHS to spend the surplus until at least 2009-2010. It is good to build in contingency, but it is a lot of contingency when, in certain parts of the country, patients are still being denied access to drugs and receiving low quality care."

Source: Guardian

Cancer patient given less than two months to live is told she must wait 25 days for drugs

A cancer patient given less than two months to live has been refused a life-prolonging drug until an NHS trust finishes a month-long investigation.

Margaret Jones hopes to be treated with Revlimid for myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow.

Her consultant says the drug, which costs around £4,300 for each cycle, could extend the 72-year-old's life without debilitating side effects.

But bosses at her primary care trust ruled they would not pay for Revlimid because it was not 'cost effective', even though other PCTs prescribe it for myeloma sufferers.

Mother-of-three Mrs Jones - backed by her family, MP, doctor and cancer charities - appealed on the grounds that another patient living nearby successfully overturned the trust's decision to block the same drug treatment in September.

But on December 5 Anne Walker, chief executive of East and North Hertfordshire PCT, said her case was still being investigated and said a response would be sent 'within 25 working days' - about half of Mrs Jones's life expectancy.

The case reignites the controversy over the 'postcode lottery' for NHS care and the time taken by the Government's rationing body to approve new cancer drugs.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) ruled last month that it would deny Revlimid to patients with myeloma despite admitting that it could extend life by up to three years.

Mrs Jones, of Welwyn, Hertfordshire, was diagnosed with myeloma just before Easter 2006. She had been using the controversial drug thalidomide to fight the cancer but recently began to suffer damaging side-effects, including loss of feeling in her hands and feet, and excruciating pain elsewhere in her body.

Following advice from her consultant-haematologist at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Welwyn Garden City, backed by the charity Myeloma UK, she applied to the trust to use Revlimid - but was declined.

Yesterday she said: 'It seems wrong that there is a drug that can help people and yet the authorities put it beyond the reach of them. It is like being in a cage and somebody putting a piece of bread just out of reach. It is cruel.'

Full article here

Mystery American man funds life saving drugs denied by NHS

A terminally ill dad who thought he would never see his baby daughter start school may live to see the special day after a mystery American offered to fund treatment denied by the NHS.

Jack Rosser, 57, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in his kidneys just days after his daughter Emma was born.

He was told he might only have two years to live - unless he took a drug called Sutent, which could help him to live for several months more.

However, at 3,000 pounds a month, Mr Rosser's Primary Care Trust refused to pay for the drug, saying the cost did not justify the little time he stood to gain from treatment.

"I've actually fought for my country in the navy, I've never been sick or on the dole," Mr Rosser told Sky News.

"The first time you want to claim anything back from the country and it gets thrown in your face."

Mr Rosser's plight was highlighted by a postcode lottery cancer campaign group - a move which had life-changing consequences for the Gloucestershire man.

An anonymous benefactor from New York, said to be a hedge fund manager, contacted the group offering to pay for Mr Rosser's treatment.

Mr Rosser's wife Jenny told Sky News she was moved when she learnt of the man's generosity.

"I felt very humble and quite tearful," she said.

"It's been such a fight and all I can say is thank you. He's given my daughter the opportunity to get to know her dad."

Mr Rosser's illness is terminal, but he says he has been given the gift of extra life.

In the extra months he hopes to live, Mr Rosser said: "Some time I could see this gentleman and thank him."

Source: Sky News

NHS must learn lessons from Haringey Baby P case, says Healthcare Commission

Lessons from the Baby P case must be learnt within Haringey and the wider NHS, according to the Healthcare Commission.

The warning follows the publication of a joint Healthcare Commission review into Haringey Council's arrangements for safeguarding children and young people after the death of a 17-month-old boy, known as Baby P.

The Haringey review, also conducted by Ofsted and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, found systemic failings within the service which cared for Baby P.

Anna Walker, Healthcare Commission chief executive, said: 'From a healthcare perspective, we were particularly concerned about the inadequacy of systems necessary to enable agencies to work together effectively on behalf of children.'

'The lessons must be fully understood and fully acted upon, both in Haringey and more widely including by the NHS.'

The commission will now carry out a review of every NHS trust in England to ensure they are meeting safeguarding children obligations.

NHS gravy train drives six figure salaries

The Sunday Times has revealed that a ‘nurse consultant’ (nurses able to carry out minor operations) in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, earned over £100,000 last year thanks to overtime bonuses for helping to reduce hospital waiting lists.

And some proper consultants, one in Devon and Exeter and one in Greater Manchester for starters, are earning over £220,000 for the same heroic commitment to achieving the Government’s 18-week waiting list target.

This raises a number of questions.

The most obvious is how on earth can a nurse, even a nurse consultant, more than double her basic earnings (£50,000) through overtime? How many extra hours is she doing and what rate is she being paid for them? The same clearly applies to the consultants.

More fundamentally, if reducing waiting lists is a National Health Service target (and it has been ever since Labour took power in 1997) why is it necessary to pay people extra to do what they’re supposed to be doing in the first place?

The Government (chiefly former chancellor Gordon Brown and a succession of health ministers) has chucked countless extra billions at the NHS over the past few years and achieved precious little extra for it.

All that’s that’s happened is that consultants and general practitioners (neither of whom were underpaid) have been given monumental pay rises for doing the same job and further monumental bonuses if they do a bit more.

Some fortunate nurses (no doubt very capable) have also been given a second class ticket on this particular gravy train too, although the great majority of nurses (unlike GPs and consultants) remain underpaid.

I can feel a fever coming on, doctor.
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Link to article here
NHS nurse takes home £100000 salary thanks to overtime

NHS want to close smoking room for terminally ill patients

POLITICALLY correct NHS bosses in Birmingham are battling to ban a smoking room for terminally ill patients – forcing them to be turfed out into the cold to enjoy their final cigarettes.

(Smoking ban doesn't apply in House of Commons)

Complete article here: Sunday Mercury

More than 400 NHS staff sacked in Wales for sexual abuse and Fraud

More than 400 NHS staff in Wales have been sacked or suspended in the past two years, according to figures obtained by an assembly member.

The alleged offences involved included abuse of patients, sexual harassment, drug thefts and fraud.

Chris Franks AM warned suspensions for a year or more in some cases put extra pressure on others working in the NHS.

Trusts stressed suspension was a "neutral act" often taken to protect the staff member involved.

The figures, obtained using the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), showed the costs of paying staff while they were suspended was more than £850,000 over two years.

They indicated 78 staff were suspended in 2006/07 and 121 in 2007/08 - a total of 199.

Over the same period there were 87 dismissals in the first year and 115 in the second - 202 altogether.

The statistics also indicated that one staff member in north Wales was suspended for 19 months in the 2006/07 financial year.

More than 90,000 people are directly employed by the health service in Wales, around five per cent of the working age population

Plaid Cymru AM Mr Franks said he accepted the numbers suspended "represents a very small proportion of NHS staff but it is important that those who fall below the standards expected are weeded out which is clearly happening".

"I do have concerns at the length of time that some staff are suspended before a decision on their future is made.

"This can be for a year or more and during that time staff are paid.

Complete article here

NHS Doctor, Sabah al-Zayyat, failed to identify Baby P's broken back and ribs

Sabah al-Zayyat

The consultant paediatrician was the last doctor to see Baby P alive, two days before his death. She failed to identify his broken back and ribs, recording that the examination could not be completed because the baby was “miserable and cranky”. She said she thought that Baby P had a cold. Dr Al-Zayyat, from Ilford, Essex, trained in Saudi Arabia and moved to Ireland in 1997 to study a master’s degree. Worked as a locum consultant paediatrician between 2002 and 2006 before moving to Great Ormond Street trust, based at St Ann’s Hospital. She has been banned from working unsupervised with children until the inquiry is complete and may face a GMC hearing.



Source: Mailonline

Almost as many patients die from bedsores as MRSA

EXCLUSIVE: Toll from bed ulcers near 5,000 £2bn cost of treating victims

By Nigel Nelson Political Editor Nigel.Nelson@People.Co.Uk

Bed sores are today revealed as the NHS's hidden killer.

New figures show they have caused nearly 5,000 deaths over five years, almost as many as hospital superbug MRSA.

Now a campaign has begun to press Health Secretary Alan Johnson to act.

Lib Dem MP Paul Burstow obtained figures showing untreated pressure ulcers were a factor in the deaths of 4,708 patients.

By comparison MRSA, which has had a much higher profile, killed 6,200.

Ex-health spokesman Mr Burstow, who was approached by victims' families, said: "These painful and grotesque sores can cause premature death. It is vital there is a national prevention programme."

Sores develop when the blood supply is cut off and strike those who are immobile or cannot feel pain suchas the old and paralysed.

They destroy tissue, allowing infection to spread, but can be prevented by checking and turning patients.

Superman actor Christopher Reeve died from a pressure sore at 52 in 2004, nine years after breaking his neck horse-riding.

Hospitals do not have to report sores, so patients are NOT checked frequently enough and there is NO way of knowing where they are most at risk.

There are estimated to be 800,000 cases a year costing the NHS £2billion.

Now the campaign group Your Turn wants records to become mandatory to name the worst hospitals.

David Stonehouse, of Guisborough, North Yorks, complained to PM Gordon Brown after his father was killed by a sore.

The Health Department said: "We provide clear guidance to hospitals on prevention."

Source: People.co.uk

You live or die - who chooses?

This woman got the life-saving cancer drug she needed. Thousands more have been sentenced to an early death by bureaucrats. Russell Miller investigates.
Photographs by Larry Dunstan


At the age of 29, Toral Shah was warned she faced losing both her breasts to avoid death from an aggressive cancer. The disease had affected both her mother and her aunt. Devastated by the news, she asked for time to come to terms with the prospect of surgery that could disfigure her for life — and chemo or radiotherapy that could prevent her from ever having children. In a matter of weeks, the tumour had grown to the size of a mango. It was on the verge of invading other tissues — and the prognosis was bad. The surgeons removed a substantial amount of tissue with the tumour and she was given a synthetic implant. In common with thousands of women, Toral faced a stark choice: have both breasts removed, and endure the harrowing ordeal of chemo or radiotherapy, or somehow find an alternative. Toral comes from a medical background and she herself came across the alternative — Tamoxifen, a drug that had been mired in controversy, considered an expensive and unproven cure, offered to only a handful of NHS patients. On the advice of Macmillan Cancer Support, she asked to be given the drug. She was told by her doctors that her tumour was a localised variety. Such tumours grow in the presence of the female hormone oestrogen, which can be blocked by Tamoxifen. She was determined to get it.

Complete article here

MUM found dead a week after ambulance sent to pick her up was cancelled because of NHS cuts

Ruth Hedge, 60, dialled 999 suffering from severe vomiting and diarrhoea.

But Dr Alan Stevenson, brought in to reduce call-outs, sent back the ambulance after speaking to Ruth, an inquest heard.

He told her to call the out-of-hours line. Ruth, of Borth, West Wales, tried but had the wrong number.

Coroner Michael Howells in Aberystwyth said it was “a failure by the NHS”, that her death was “avoidable” and recorded she died of natural causes aggravated by neglect.

Source: The Sun

Nine out of ten preventable deaths in the NHS are never reported to officials, it has emerged.

Of the estimated 72,000 annual deaths in the NHS, just 3,200 are recorded by the National Patient Safety Agency, MPs were told.

The Commons Health Select Committee heard evidence from experts in its first evidence session on its investigation into patient safety.

The NPSA runs a system where all NHS staff can report incidents or near misses so patterns can be spotted and the wider health community warned.

Incidents can include drugs administered in the wrong way or the wrong dose, medicines mixed up, the wrong operation carried out, a patient wrongly identified and broken or malfunctioning equipment.

Howard Stoate, a practising GP and Labour MP for Dartford, said the National Patient Safety Agency's own estimates suggest there are 72,000 preventable deaths in the NHS each year.

However, the incident recording database had collected just 3,200 reports of patient deaths, in 2007/8.

He said: "That is not just under-reporting, that is an extra-ordinary figure.

"If the public realised that only between five and ten per cent of preventable deaths are being reported they would have something to say about that.

Source: Telegraph

Baby refused NHS treatment

Baby Byron was born with a condition called plagiocephaly - also known as flat-head-syndrome - which means his skull dents and becomes mis-shapen even when just slight pressure is put on it.

Even just laying on the same part of his head can cause it to change shape.

Hi family say he was fine when he was born, but as time went by they noticed there was a dent appearing in one side of his head and a bump growing on the opposite side.

His aunt Leanne Aspinnal who lives in Eastfield described it.

"It looks like he's been hit in the head with a brick on one side, but raised up on the other."

Byron was taken to hospital to see a paediatrician and they confirmed he had the condition.

Leanne continued, "All they did was make sure he could turn his neck, as sometimes babies can get stiff necks because of it."

"We were told not to worry about it and that his hair would grow over it, but the thing is it's not just a little bit of a funny shape...it's awful."

They were also told there shouldn't be any health worries for them to worry about, but Leanne isn't so sure.

"I spoke to another mother who has a child with the same condition and he now has to have specially made glasses because his eyes don't align because of the shape. At the very least he'll get bullied and then what happens when he goes bald when he's older?"

To re-shape his head back to normal a special helmet's needed that Byron would wear for twenty-three hours a day - without NHS help it's going to cost the family £2000 which they're desperately trying to raise.

But time is of the essence because the treatment needs to be done before Byron's 1-year-old, as that's when his skull will harden permanently into whatever shape it is at the time.

Leanne doesn't see why they can't have it done on the NHS.

"It's just a lottery and depends on what postcode you live in. If you live in Leeds the hospitals will do it. In Peterborough they're not willing to."

"At the end of the day the NHS fund a whole lot of things that's caused by what people have done to themselves, but a baby's born with a condition it can do nothing about - it is going to affect the way it lives and looks - and they won't do anything about it."

When asked why the treatment couldn't be provided, Peterborough's NHS Trust released the following statement:

The use of specialist helmets for the treatment of plagiocephaly is not standard practice within the NHS and is not routinely commissioned by primary care trusts. In the absence of NHS guidelines on their application, NHS Peterborough reviews each request through its Exceptional Cases panel on an individual case by case basis.

To date NHS Peterborough has not funded an application for specialist helmets for the treatment of plagiocephaly as there has been no specialist clinical support for these individual applications. Clinical support would need to come, for example, from an NHS consultant paediatrician.


If you would like to donate anything to the family to help with Byron's treatment, please call his aunt Leanne on 01733 315 386 or 07857 346 573.

Source: Hereward FM

NHS Postcode Lottery: Diagnosis murder

GPs paid £1 a time not to refer patients to hospital

Family doctors are receiving cash bonuses not to send patients to hospital despite National Health Service research that suggests incentive payments can reduce the quality of care.

GPs are paid £1 per patient to spend time reviewing their decision to send someone to hospital and a further £1 for every name on their surgeries’ list if they reduce their previous year’s referral rate. An average surgery with 10,000 patients will receive up to £20,000 for taking part in the scheme.

Eighty out of 82 practices in the Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust area signed up for it this month. Similar incentive schemes have been set up across the country despite the NHS’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) giving a warning about the risks. “Financial incentives to encourage GPs to reduce referral rates can be effective, but this is a high risk,” it says. It concludes that reduction “may apply to both necessary and unnecessary referrals”.

Oxfordshire PCT introduced cash incentives after a rise of 8 per cent last year in the number of referrals to Oxford Radcliffe Hospital NHS Trust and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust. Nationally, hospital referral rates increased by 16 per cent.

If doctors hit their targets, then the PCT will be left with a bill of £1.2 million. However, the trust believes that the expense is justified because the increasing amount of patients being sent to hospital is estimated to cost £6 million.

GP surgeries across London, Essex, Oxfordshire, Devon and Wiltshire are said to have signed up to incentive schemes that are at least partly based on reducing hospital referrals.

Laurence Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP Committee, said: “I don’t think patients’ services should be treated as a commodity which is incentivised if you don’t do something. A large number of patients are referred to hospital for investigation. If you don’t know what’s wrong, you cannot know how to handle the problem.”

Martin Roland, who led the NIHR investigators, said yesterday that patients were right to be worried about payments to GPs simply for meeting quotas on reducing referrals.

“If [the payment] triggers some sort of thoughtful process, such as talking to a more experienced colleague, then that is commendable and may save unnecessary referrals,” said Professor Roland, director of the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre. “But I would be cautious about incentives simply to reduce numbers if they are not tied to some sort of clinical review. The danger is that patients who would benefit from referral to hospital would no longer be referred.”

Sue Woollacott, chairman of the Patient Support Group at Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, said: “It seems to imply that GPs aren’t making good judgments and need financial incentives in order to do that. If I were a GP and getting payments for the practice, it would seem like some sort of bribe.”

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said that it was “inefficient and unethical” to pay GPs to refer fewer patients to hospital. “If patients find out that their local health bureaucracy is paying their GP not to refer them to hospital they will be rightly outraged,” he said.

The schemes come after the Government’s admission that the average GP now earns more than £103,000 but that two thirds of NHS patients cannot see their doctor within 48 hours.

Stephen Richards, chairman of the clinical executive for Oxfordshire PCT, said its research on 120 patients referred to hospital dermatology clinics found that at least half could have safely been seen by community-based services. “Junior, less experienced doctors do have higher referral rates than their more experienced colleagues and one of the focuses of our schemes is to encourage discussion with senior doctors with these relatively less experienced doctors,” he said. “By insisting that a senior colleague is doing a review of the decision-making progress, we are extremely unlikely not to refer someone who needs to be referred.”

A Department of Health spokesman said: “Most people prefer to be treated at home or in the community rather than in hospital if possible. GPs should base their referral decisions on what is clinically appropriate.”

Article here
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29/6/08 Gordon Brown promises to end the Postcode Lottery

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£30m bill for NHS negligence claims

Almost £30 million has been spent on settling NHS clinical negligence claims made in the last year.

Health Minister Ann Keen said more than £18 million had been paid out in damages, with a further £10 million on legal costs, to the end of September.

A total of £18,217,815 went on settling 2,262 cases - an average payout of just over £8,000.

But £7,878,866 was spent on claimants' legal costs, and £2,272,334 on defence legal costs.

And over half of the cases 4,593 formally claimed in 2007-08 have yet to be settled, with 2,331 outstanding.

In a written Commons answer to shadow health minister Mike Penning, Ms Keen said the claims were made against the NHS body providing the care.

The information was from the NHS Litigation Authority, she added, and did not include claims against self-employed contractors in primary care.

NHS trust to spend £400,000 on yacht for unemployed teenagers

The chief executive of NHS Hull, Chris Long, said that the yacht, which would cost £400,000, would account for just 0.1 per cent of the PCT's annual budget. "I said we would never sort out health problems in Hull until we sorted out the employment issues facing the city. There is an absolute link between good education, good employment and good health."

But Steve Brady, leader of the Labour group on the city council, said the spending plans were unacceptable. "In the current economic climate, I'm amazed our local PCT is even thinking about doing something like this."

All stories on this topic here

Breast cancer patients should be denied a life-prolonging treatment on the NHS

Women should be refused the "last-ditch" drug even though the firm which manufactures it has offered to pay for the first doses, with the NHS only paying for further courses if it is shown to work.

Trials of the drug lapatinib, also known as Tyverb, have shown it can reduce the size of a tumour by 60 per cent and extend life by an average of two months, compared to standard treatment.

But the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence says it does not extend life by long enough to justify the extra cost.

The drug, which costs £1,068 for a four-week supply, has received its European licence, making it available on private prescription to patients in the UK.

Lapatinib works on a type of breast cancer known as HER-2 positive, so called because the tumour produces the protein HER 2 which fuels its growth.

This form of the disease accounts for around a fifth of the 45,000 cases of breast cancer each year.

The treatment is for women who have already received chemotherapy and the drug Herceptin, which is regarded as the gold standard treatment to stop the cancer returning, but whose cancer is still growing. It is thought 2,000 women each year could benefit from the drug.

The makers GlaxoSmithKline have offered to provide the treatment free for the first 12 weeks and the NHS would only pay for extra doses if it is still working after that.

But Nice has ruled in draft guidance that even with this offer the treatment is still not cost effective.

The drug is being given to patients in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Jane Tomlinson, the cancer campaigner who died of the illness last year at the age of 43, was told by her NHS drug that she could not have the drug.

She was eventually given access to the drug as part of clinical trials.

Because the drug must be given in combination with another treatment and it provides only a limited extra survival, it breaches the cost effectiveness threshold set by Nice, three times over.

The row is over the fact that women in the late stages of breast cancer are receiving Herceptin even when it has stopped working for them and GlaxoSmithKline has argued it is this group who should be switched to lapatinib, which costs about the same and has been shown to work.

But because patients should not be receiving Herceptin in these circumstances anyway, Nice has argued that lapatinib cannot be compared to it in this way.

Simon Jose, General Manager for GSK UK Pharmaceuticals said: "Given our involvement, it is difficult to comment without the appearance of self interest, however we strongly believe that the wrong decision has been made for patients, doctors and the NHS.

"For patients with Her2-positive advanced breast cancer and who have few treatment options left, Tyverb (lapatinib) offers real hope of slowing the disease. We therefore remain wholly committed to working with the NHS and NICE to make this innovative medicine available."

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, said: "We are disappointed that the clinical evidence presented to Nice does not appear to be sufficient for them to recommend lapatinib on the NHS.

"Nice often has extremely difficult decisions to make, but we believe a negative decision from Nice should lead to positive action. This is an area where the Government can work closely with Nice, the pharmaceutical industry and funding bodies such as ourselves to carry out further research into the true role of lapatinib."

The guidance from NICE is still in the draft stages and is open for consultation.

article here

Dentists 'giving patients pointless check-ups to exploit NHS payouts'

Dentists are 'exploiting' the NHS by inviting healthy patients for needless check-ups to maximise their profits, the Government has said.
Chief dental officer Dr Barry Cockroft accused dentists of advising patients to return every six months when official guidance says check-ups are only required every two years.
He also said some were routinely splitting up treatment that could be given in one session, in order to receive the NHS appointment payment more times.
Dr Cockcroft said unnecessary check-ups were unfairly inflating dentists' salaries - already pushing £100,000 - and were clogging up waiting lists.
Officials have ordered a crackdown on the practice, which they say could free up 800,000 appointments a year and hundreds of thousands of pounds for the NHS.
Dentists' pay shot up after a new contract was introduced in 2006, but over the time since then the number of people seeing an NHS dentist has fallen by a million.
The average dentist's salary in 2006-07 was £96,135 - an 11 per cent increase on the last year of the old contract. Guidance from NICE, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, recommends patients have a check-up every two years, unless they are at risk of a life-threatening illness.
A Department of Health spokesman said: 'It is a contractual requirement for dentists to apply the NICE guidance.

'However, it is clear from new data available to primary care trusts that many patients are being seen every six months or so, effectively preventing new patients from getting access to NHS dentistry.
'PCTs now have contract based data to enable them to address this.' Some invitations to check-ups have come in the form of ' threatening' letters, warning that failure to attend could cost a patient their NHS place.
Dr Anthony Halperin, a dentist and a trustee of the Patients' Association, said: 'There is no doubt that some dentists are abusing the system. It is entirely inappropriate to see healthy patients so often.'
But Peter Ward, chief executive of the British Dental Association, said there was no evidence to back up the Government claims.
'The interval between patients being recalled by their NHS dentist is, according to NICE guidelines, a matter for the practitioner's clinical judgment in consultation with the patient,' he said.
'The BDA supports this guideline, as we do not believe a one-size-fits-all approach is clinically appropriate.
'Dentists develop treatment plans in conjunction with the patient, ensuring they are clinically appropriate and fit with the individual's wishes.'

article here

'It's like having a death sentence hanging over me'

Sam Khan, 42, from London, has suffered from pulmonary hypertension – high blood pressure in the lungs – since the age of 25. This potentially fatal condition causes extreme breathlessness in around 1,500 people in the UK. In March 2008, Nice ruled against a whole class of existing drugs called prostacyclins, leaving Sam with a two-month supply of hers, which cost £37,000 per year.

Ms Khan said: "My condition has reached the stage that the tablets alone are not enough. I need the inhaler six times a day, but then I can work and contribute to society. Without it, I can barely walk three or four steps. When Nice decided the drug wasn't cost effective, I was devastated. The fact it could be taken away is like having a death sentence hanging over me. I know I won't be able to work any more if Nice doesn't reverse the decision as my PCT [primary care trust] has refused to pay for it. I understand the reality behind what Nice has to do, but when you're in the middle of it, it is difficult. I don't want to live for ever, or even to 75 with this illness, but I want to be an active member of society while I reasonably can."

Article in The Independent: The price of life – it was £20,000. Now NHS drugs body recalculates here

NHS child loses out as surgeon gives liver transplant to private patient from the Gulf

A senior surgeon broke NHS guidelines by transplanting part of a donated liver into a private overseas patient instead of saving it for someone on Britain’s waiting list.

Professor Nigel Heaton, head of the transplant unit at King’s College Hospital in London, transplanted part of the liver into a boy from one of the Gulf states.

The surgeon was the subject of a formal investigation after other doctors said that a child on the NHS organ waiting list should have been given priority. National guidelines state that, because of the acute shortage of donor organs in Britain, livers must be offered to all other NHS centres before they can be given to a patient from outside the EU.

There are about 400 NHS patients on the liver transplant waiting list – 20 per cent of whom will die before a suitable organ can be found.

The incident sparked fury among surgeons at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds, which first received the liver from a 40-year-old donor. After instructions from UK Transplant, which co-ordinates NHS transplant services, the Leeds surgeons sent the liver to King’s for a ‘super-urgent’ adult NHS patient on the understanding that it was to be used solely for that person.

Complete article here

Professor Paul Goddard: Political correctness means dire care for patients

Labour's record on the NHS came under unprecedented attack yesterday from one of Britain's most senior doctors.

Professor Paul Goddard, a former president of the Royal Society of Medicine, accused the Government of leading the NHS into 'catastrophic meltdown'.

The award-winning professor directed particular anger at the drugs-rationing body Nice, which he accused of virtually killing patients to save money.

He said Labour's obsession with bureaucracy and political correctness had resulted in dire care for patients.

Money-saving practices, introduced to meet strict Whitehall targets, had contributed greatly to the rise of superbugs killing patients on hospital wards.

Professor Goddard said he became so disillusioned he ended his 30-year career as a consultant radiologist in disgust.

He had been head of training for ten hospitals across south west England, but felt the most effective way he could challenge the 'shocking incompetence' and mess of the NHS was to speak out.

Professor Goddard, 58, said: 'The NHS was built on the foundation of caring for the community. It was designed to help those who needed help, care for those who needed care, and treat those who needed treatment.

complete article here

Elderly hospital patients restrained with braces and bedsheets

Carers who restrained elderly hospital patients with braces and bed sheets have been blasted in a report.

The practice by untrained staff posed a "significant safety risk" to the five pensioners, investigators said.

Cops were called but found insufficient evidence to prosecute. No staff were sacked.

The report, produced after a probe by Harrow Primary Care Trust in North London, found the human rights of five patients had been breached in one month.

The Fletcher Ward at Northwick Park Hospital, where 42 per cent of patients suffer dementia, was at "minimum staffing levels" at the time.

Pct Chief Executive Dr Sarah Crowther said: "This was unacceptable. Disciplinary action has been taken and training introduced."

Gordon Lishman, of Age Concern, said: "It's horrendous that people are abused while in the care of the NHS."

article here

Gordon Brown extends the Postcode Lottery to include the new "Illness Lottery"

Rochdale /health campaigner, Councillor Jean Ashworth, has slammed Gordon Brown’s decision to allow free prescriptions for cancer patients in England but not all patients suffering from long-term illness. The Prime Minister announced in his speech at the Labour conference that as of next year this new policy would be put in place. Currently Scotland is the only country in the UK that enjoys free prescriptions for all.

Councillor Ashworth said: “I welcome the decision for free prescriptions for cancer patients but I think Gordon Brown has missed a golden opportunity to help many others suffering from life threatening conditions. Take asthma for example. At the moment one in four children suffer from asthma in the UK and when they reach 16, many of them can’t afford to pay for their prescriptions.

"Asthma is a life threatening disease. If people do not receive the medication they need they will die. Nobody should have to pay to breathe."

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Cumbria Primary Care Trust condemn Michael Kennett to death to save money

A WHITEHAVEN man battling cancer has had a lifeline appeal for treatment turned down by health bosses.

Already denied NHS funding for the drug Avastin, Cumbria Primary Care Trust (PCT) has now turned Michael Kennett down again on appeal despite it being the only remaining avenue open to the 66-year-old, of Springfield Avenue, to potentially prolong his life.

Michael was denied the drug because it is not deemed to be “cost effective”. Now the family faces footing the £20,000 to £40,000 bill themselves.

Avastin can slow down tumours’ growth but the drug is not recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for treatment of certain types of cancer.

Michael was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2001 and underwent an operation. But the cancer spread to his liver and gall bladder, requiring a further operation. Six months later the cancer was found in Michael’s lungs and he was more recently told it has returned to his liver.

The family are frustrated that they were not allowed to attend and make representation at last week’s appeal – in fact, they were only told the exact date it was taking place the day before.

Leanne Graham, Michael’s daughter, says the family have not had a fair hearing and is considering court action. They are also set to re-appeal but in the meantime Michael’s need for the drug cannot wait any longer.

“This has dragged my dad down something chronic,” said Leanne, of Cleator Moor. “It’s been 10 weeks but we can’t wait any longer.

“By some means we are going to try and fund this drug for as long as we can. They said there wasn’t enough evidence to fit the exceptional criteria. But the primary care trust won’t tell us what the exceptional criteria are.

“No one has ever had funding for this drug from Cumbria PCT,” said Leanne.

“We weren’t even allowed to attend the appeal so we don’t know what was discussed and we have not had a chance to put a case together. Some PCTs allow people to attend.

“We will re-appeal but I don’t know if it will do any good. It is very frustrating. We have had brilliant support from people locally but I can totally understand why people give up fighting – I have never felt so defeated by something ever.”

Michael’s situation, which was revealed by The Whitehaven News some weeks ago, was this week also featured in The Times.

Leanne would like people to write to the Primary Care Trust with their views on the subject and to pledge their support for people to be given a fair hearing.

A spokesman for Cumbria Primary Care Trust said this week: “We cannot comment on individual cases for reasons of confidentially but appreciate that for patients, families, carers and the public the decision over the use of different drugs can be highly emotional.

“NHS Cumbria operates under a framework set by the Department of Health. The trust has to take account of guidance from NICE and other professional advisory bodies when making decisions about which drugs to fund.

“In order to assess each treatment fairly, NICE has to look at the benefit of these treatments and at the effectiveness of getting this benefit in the long-term.

“NICE, the Scottish Medicines Consortium and both of the local NHS cancer networks which cover Cumbria do not recommend the use of Avastin for specific types of cancer.”

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Leicester Royal Infirmary's catalogue of deadly blunders killed former member of staff

Hospital staff have apologised for errors in treating a dying patient – including thinking she was another woman of the same name.

Lynda Greatorex, from Wigston, died aged 59 at Leicester Royal Infirmary after being admitted with heart problems.

The grandmother had been a medical secretary at the hospital for nine years before retiring a year before her death.

Her daughter, Gaynor, also works at the hospital and said she was appalled by the distress her mother suffered in the run-up to her death, on April 19, from heart failure.

Gaynor, of Anstey Lane, Leicester, said the worst error was that doctors used another woman's file while treating her mother, which meant they went to the wrong GP to inquire about her medical records.

She said her mother was also denied heart drugs early in her treatment and that medical staff left her unattended and failed to notice when her blood sugar levels became dangerously low.

She should have been checked every two hours, but was not seen from 8pm on April 16 until 7am the next day.

Gaynor said: "They never asked her details properly so they were always confusing her with another woman with the same name.

"She was put in a side room and left with minimal nursing contact. Every day on the ward there were errors and she suffered because of them.

"It's not about compensation for me and I don't claim my mum would have lived much longer if treatment had been better.

"But she worked for the hospital for nine years and to repay her with such dismal treatment was terrible.

"It's a shame the last week of her life had to be so traumatic."

Gaynor made an official complaint to the hospital in July and has received an apology.

In a statement, a hospital spokesman said: "An investigation was undertaken and a written response provided.

"We deeply regret Miss Greatorex had to raise concerns at such a difficult time.

"We have previously extended an invitation to Miss Greatorex to meet with senior staff and would extend that invitation once again should she have continuing concerns."

NHS complaints system 'pointless'

More than two thirds of patients believe the NHS complaints procedure is pointless, a survey said.

The latest Patients Association (PA) report, in which the survey was published, has described the NHS complaints system as "cumbersome, variable and takes too long."

Of the patients polled, 69% said they had wanted to complain about the healthcare they had received in the last five years.

For those who complained, 29% described the process as "totally pointless" and only 2% said the experience had been "very useful".

More than three quarters (81%) believe that there is not a culture of openness in the NHS when errors occur and that staff are not encouraged to report mistakes.

The PA report concluded: "While patients will always accept that errors will occur in any health service, what they will not accept is the fact that staff are not open about admitting such errors occur."

On the matter of recent MRSA outbreaks and other healthcare acquired infections 47% of patients pointed the finger of blame at the NHS trust managers.

Both nurses and cleaning staff were blamed by 16% of respondents, whilst only 10% thought doctors were responsible.

Three quarters (75%) of respondents believe trust in doctors and nurses has decreased compared to five years ago.

As a result, 96% said they believed patients question the actions of doctors and nurses more than they used to half a decade ago.

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Dying woman spent last days fighting for cancer drugs

Next month, the Government will publish its review of NHS policy on cancer drugs, determining whether the health service will pay towards the care of patients who pay for medications the state refuses to fund. Ministers were forced to examine the issue after a public outcry over the death of Linda O'Boyle, who was denied free NHS care after paying for a life-extending bowel cancer drug. Since then, the whole system of drug rationing has become the subject of intense public debate.

Sarah Perez, who died in June aged 40, five days before the review was announced, was also denied drugs which could have extended her life. Campaigners believe her story is one of the "most inhumane" examples of the way the health service bureaucracy takes decisions about life and death.

Sarah Jane Perez was 33-years-old and just back from her honeymoon with her husband James when she was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2001.

Within a year, her hopes of having a family had been dashed. A hysterectomy was followed by an operation on her bowel, and, a year later, a stem cell transplant when she was diagnosed with leukaemia.

For six years she underwent repeated courses of chemotherapy and treatment as tumours spread to her liver. Mrs Perez, from Enfield in North London, tried to live as normal a life as possible, running a jewellery business she had set up in London's Hatton Garden before she fell ill.

But by January of this year, her cancer had spread further. Mrs Perez' consultant said there was only one hope left to secure her some extra time; a drug called cetuximab, shown to have given patients an average of four extra months of life in cases which responded to treatment.

The previous year, the NHS rationing body, the National Insitute of Health and Clinical Excellence, had ruled against widespread use of the drug, which it said was not "cost effective" at £700 a week. However, primary care trusts are not allowed to institute blanket bans on any treatment, and Mrs Perez's consultant hoped to secure the treatment for her as an exceptional case, particularly given his patient's youthful age which meant that the cancer was progressing aggressively, but might also respond more quickly to treatment.

When Enfield PCT refused to fund the drug, branded Erbitux, Mrs Perez asked to invoke her right to appeal against the decision, setting out why she should be treated under exceptional circumstances. Instead, in March, she was told that the PCT had already held the appeal, maintaining its original decision, despite the fact neither she nor her consultant had been given the chance to submit any evidence stating her case.

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Ambulances running late for emergencies

RESPONSE times to emergencies in Ledbury and Colwall are so poor the West Midlands Ambulance Service has been called to account by Herefordshire Council.

With other areas of the county faring better, the situation is being called “a postcode lottery”.

Category A emergencies are those classed as immediately life threatening.

The official target is for ambulances to get to 75 per cent of these in eight minutes. Last month, ambulances got to 89.5 per cent of Category A emergencies in Bromyard within eight minutes. The figure for the Colwall area was just 20 per cent.

The Ledbury figures were 72.7 per cent in August, 57.9 per cent in July, 57.1 per cent in June and 50 per cent in May. The statistics will be examined at a health scrutiny committee meeting at the council chambers in Brockington, Hereford, on Tuesday at 10am. All are welcome to speak at the meeting.

Committee chairman and Ledbury councillor Kay Swinburne said: “The ambulance service will be genuinely scrutinised.

“They have been briefed that they will need to justify not having more vehicles available here and they will be asked to explain the data.

“They can tell me they’ve had problems with Colwall Bridge but the data is appalling.”

Coun Peter Watts, who also represents Ledbury, said: “It’s a postcode lottery and the ambulance service needs to raise its game.”

The situation has added urgency following the death in July of Ledbury pensioner Alfred ‘Pip’ Parry.

He had to wait for an ambulance for at least 17 minutes, although his family say it was a lot longer. Mr Watts said: “That recent tragic occurence made people aware of how vulnerable they could be.”

Chris Kowalik of West Midlands Ambulance service, said: “We always have and always will send the nearest available resource to an emergency call.

“However, it is a fact of life that in rural areas it will take longer for ambulance crews to get to a patient.”

article here

NHS HITS TARGET TO CUT MRSA, BUT C.DIFF IS SOARING

OFFICIAL figures show the target to cut cases of MRSA has been reached – but almost 10 people a day are still being struck down with the hospital superbug, Tories said last night.

They also criticised the Government for its failure to tackle rates of Clostridium difficile, another infection that has spiralled.

Over the last four years the number of people struck down with MRSA in English hospitals has fallen from almost 2,000 to 836 per quarter.

The achievement was yesterday hailed by the Prime Minister as testament to the hard work of NHS staff.

But critics immediately accused Gordon Brown of patting himself on the back as rates of the far more common killer bug C.diff were on the rise.

In a break with tradition the latest figures for C.diff were not released, leading the Tories to accuse the Government of only issuing positive data.

Andrew Lansley, shadow health secretary, said: “It is a disgrace that there have been more than 800 cases of MRSA in our hospitals in just three months.

“Labour have let down patients by caring more about spin than doing what it takes to root out infections.

“It’s telling that they changed the publication date of MRSA statistics for political gain, that they only met their target by moving the goalposts and that the best they could come up with have been gimmicks like Gordon Brown’s deep cleaning programme.”

The most recent figures for rates of C.diff showed a six per cent increase in hospital infections, hitting 10,500 in the first three months of the year.

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Patient who fought for life-saving transplant has died, after being told his life-saving treatment was not cost effective

Published Date: 18 September 2008
By Laura Rands

A West Hallam leukaemia patient who fought the NHS for a life-saving bone marrow transplant has died.

Peter Lord was denied the £70,000 stem cell transplant at the end of last year because of where he lived. He moved in with his sister in Nottingham and the treatment was agreed.

The 52-year-old, who lived on Scargill Walk, underwent the transplant at Nottingham City Hospital in January with a 50/50 chance of it extending his life. But four months later he was left devastated after it failed. He had aggressive chemotherapy treatment in June in a last attempt to keep him alive, but it failed.

Mr Lord, a design engineer, was originally denied potentially live-saving treatment for his leukaemia as his local health authority, Derbyshire County Primary Care Trust, said it was not cost effective.

He appealed against the decision but was turned down and moved into his sister's house to beat the 'postcode lottery' of health funding. Derbyshire PCT and Nottingham University Hospitals Trust then came to an agreement that the operation should go ahead.

When Derbyshire PCT denied him the treatment, Mr Lord told the Advertiser: "If I don't get funding before the leukaemia, I die. I would move to save my life."

Mr Lord was first diagnosed with leukaemia after a blood test. After six months of chemotherapy, he spent 13 months at work in remission before the disease returned in October last year, and had to have a bone marrow transplant.

Peter Lord died at Nottingham City Hospital on Tuesday and his funeral is being held this Friday at Bramcote Crematorium, Nottingham at 2.45pm.

article here

NHS bill from solicitors doubles

The NHS bill to pay solicitors acting for patients in compensation claims has more than doubled in four years.

The annual bill in England now tops £90m - a 122% increase in four years, despite the fact the number of cases has remained similar.

The NHS Litigation Authority (NHSLA) told the BBC the rise was due to an increase in no win, no fee claims, which has led to some solicitors doubling their rates to £600 an hour.

About half of the cases the NHSLA sees now are brought by solicitors on a no win, no fee basis as opposed to under a fifth in 2000.

Chief executive Steve Walker said the trend had been caused by the tightening eligibility criteria for legal aid. Only children or those cases deemed in the public interest get state funding.

He told the BBC: "Solicitors are not doing anything illegal, but it is pretty unattractive that these fees are being charged. There is no reason why they should be vastly different from what we pay our own legal teams, but they are.

"Their argument is that they have a higher mark up because there is a risk they will end up with nothing, but in reality they cherry-pick the cases they are most likely to win."

Four years ago, the NHS paid out £40.9m to the solicitors of patients in costs under the clinical negligence scheme for trusts, but by 2007/08 that had risen to £90.7m. In comparison, the fees charged by the NHS's own lawyers was £29.3m in 2003/04, but had only risen by 48% to £43.3m last year. The number of cases resolved each year has stayed at around 6,000.

Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants committee, criticised the solicitors.

"These organisations are encouraging a compensation culture and making a lot of money out of it. All the money that is going to lawyers is money being taken away from patient care. Obviously there is a need for the system, it is just that solicitors should do more to keep their costs in order like the NHS is doing."

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Can't the NHS just be less negligent in the first place and stop treating their patients so appallingly so that compensation claims wouldn't be necessary? If you didn't need to pay compensation for mistreating your patients then you'd have more money to spend on saving lives instead of letting them die. It works both ways.

Cancer drugs only given to those 'who make the most noise'

Expensive cancer drugs are only available to patients who "make the most noise" under a "patently unfair" system, a leading cancer doctor has warned.

By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:25PM BST 11 Sep 2008

Unless sufferers are allowed to buy the medication without losing the rest of their NHS care a "black market" in the drugs will open up, Professor Karol Sikora told Mike Richards, the Government's cancer Tsar, who is carrying out a review into controversial "top up" payments.

Support for top ups has been echoed by the King's Fund, the influential think tank, which said that the current system was "untenable".

The Government ordered Mr Richard's review following widespread outrage over cases of cancer sufferers who were charged as private patients after they bought potentially life extending drugs.

However, doctors have expressed concern that allowing "top ups" could lead to a two-tier NHS, where some patients get drugs which others cannot afford.

During a debate designed to inform Mr Richard's review, Prof Sikora, medical director of CancerPartnersUK, said that there was already an unfair system when it came to expensive cancer drugs: "If you look at the cases it seems that if you make a fuss you tend to get.

"If you don't make a fuss then you don't get.

"It is patently unfair that if you make a noise then you will get these drugs."

He went on: "If we leave the status quo, if we leave this typical British muddle, then an underground market (in these drugs) will develop."

He also called on the Government to "abolish" the Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) decision panels, which critics claim are leading to a "post code lottery" in cancer care.

NHS bosses can refuse to provide drugs if they have been rejected as too expensive by the Government's drugs watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice).

If a drug has yet to be assessed by Nice then local PCTs can choose to give the drug in what it deems "exceptional" circumstances.

The call comes just 24 hours after a patient won access to a £4,000-a-course blood cancer drug after taking his local PCT to court.

Colin Ross, 55, was given just two months to live if he did not receive the drug, Revlimid.

The King's Fund, which hosted the debate, described the current system as "untenable" and said that under "certain circumstances" patients should be able to pay for their own drugs without losing the rest of their NHS care.

However, the Fund believes that those patients should also pay the extra costs associated with the drugs, such as the price of administering them, so that other NHS patients did not lose out.

Mr Richard's review is expected to report sometime in October.

Last month the Telegraph revealed that Nice was drawing up plans to provide patients with independent medical advice on drugs, including those which it had deemed too expensive, which could be offered to patients if a U-turn on top ups is announced.

The Conservatives have said that they are against introducing new charges into the NHS and have proposed a system where drug companies would be paid only if treatments work.

NHS Fails to Diagnose 500 000 Brits with Diabetes

Half a million Brits are unaware that they are living with Type 2 diabetes, due to the failure of the NHS, claims a new study.

According to the charity Diabetes UK more than 500, 000 people in England are unknowingly living with Type 2 diabetes- leaving them at risk of heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney failure and amputations.

The research claims that NHS services in England are failing to diagnose the condition which can go undetected up to a staggering 12 years.

Unfortunately the quality and quantity for diagnosis of type 2 diabetes across the UK is not equal, with some regions across the UK receiving better diagnoses than others, says the study. For example figures reveal that there is around 100 percent diagnosis for the people of Birmingham and just 50 percent for those in London- with regions including Kensington, Chelsea, Westminster and Camden having the worse detection rates.

“Some PCTs (Primary Care Trusts) have done an excellent job in diagnosing Type 2 diabetes,” says Douglas Smallwood, Chief Executive of Diabetes UK.

“It is extremely worrying that hundreds of thousands of people in other areas are going about their daily lives unaware they have a condition that puts them at greater risk of devastating complications.”

Smallwood adds that early identification is key for those with Type 2 diabetes but unfortunately by the time half a million Brits are finally diagnosed with having the condition, most will already show signs of complications.

The Department of Health National Service Framework for Diabetes made it a priority to improve Type 2 diabetes diagnosis in England back in 2001. However the charity believes barely a dent has been made in the detection process of type 2 diabetes. What’s more 1 in 3 PCTs do not even have a specific strategy for preventing the condition.

The charity is warning specialists that all communities must be examined for Type 2 diabetes, especially those in deprived communities who are 2.5 times more likely to have diabetes. Those who do not have regular access to health services must also be reached by the VRAM programme- responsible for Type 2 diabetes diagnosis.

Those at risk of diabetes are those with a large waist, people aged over 40 (or over 25 for people of Black or South Asian origin), those who are overweight and lastly individuals with a family history of the condition.

For more information on diabetes go to: Information on Diabetes

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Sky's health correspondent Thomas Moore gives you an introduction to the virtual hospital

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Exclusive: Sky News has uncovered evidence that NHS staff are coming under political pressure to spin the headlines

We have obtained a letter, written by a senior representative of the Department of Health, which strongly criticises England's largest primary care trust for failing to "manage" the media.

North Yorkshire and York PCT had been singled out for its handling of so-called exceptional cases, in which patients ask to be treated with medicines that have yet to be approved for use on the NHS.

Newspapers highlighted cancer patients who had been denied expensive new drugs.

Yorkshire and Humber Strategic Health Authority, which ensures Department of Health policy is followed in the region, wrote to the PCTs chief executive demanding urgent action.

"This has resulted in damage to the reputation of the NHS. The PCT needs to look at how the media messages can be managed more effectively... to stem the national harm to the NHS profile that this constant publicity is creating."

But Dr Peter Brambleby, the director of public health for the PCT, is so angry about the letter that he has blown the whistle.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News, he said: "It is our general responsibility to protect the NHS brand, but we shouldn't be driven as a first consideration by what will this look like in the headlines in the local newspaper.

"Our first consideration has to be the health of the population, the evidence base behind which the decision is going to be made, and showing that we're responsible stewards of public funds. That's our job and that's what protects the NHS brand."

He said politicians should keep clear of clinical decisions over patients' treatment.

"The easy way out of managing adverse headlines in the short term is to simple to say yes to every request that has caught the media attention. But I don't think for a moment that any member of the public would recognise that as a legitimate criterion for prioritising funding," he said.

His comments are hugely embarrassing for the Department of Health, which has insisted that local health managers are free to make their own decisions over how they spend money for local patients.

The Tories said the Department of Health's bureaucrats were wrong to send the letter. Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley MP said they missed the point.

"Everybody else in Europe seems to be able to get access to these drugs, but we don't. That's what I want to see them working on. How they can ensure that primary care trusts are using their resources to ensure patients get the treatment they need, not trying to cover up the bad stories when they don't."

Some of the negative headlines involved the Velcade Three. Jacky Pickles, Janice Wrigglesworth and Marie Morton all have multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer.

They have campaigned for treatment with Velcade, and encourage patients who have been denied the drug to go to the papers.

They make no apology for embarrassing the PCT.

Jacky Pickles said: "If someone says to you you can be quiet and die, or you can challenge and maybe live longer...you want to see your children grow up, don't you?

"We've all got children and we want to see them grow up. You'd challenge anybody to see your children grow up."

Even the government's cancer csar is critical of the local variations in access to new medicines. He says PCTs don't have the expertise to judge complex drugs. He wants regional panels of specialists to take over the role.

"I am extremely keen that there is equal access to treatment across the whole of the NHS, because that I believe is one of the founding principles of the NHS," he said.

The Department of Health turned down our request for an interview.

The Strategic Health Authority said all PCTs must be open and transparent about their procedures and explain their decisions: "There has never been any question of political interference in any decision," it said.

article here

Revealed: NHS cash lottery

Postcode lottery fight for cancer sufferer

By Emily-Ann Elliott

A cancer sufferer has launched a legal battle against a postcode lottery that threatens to shorten his life.

Colin Ross, 55, believes he would be given a life-prolonging drug if he lived just 12 miles from his home.

A barrister for Mr Ross told a judge it was an "end of road" legal challenge that could mean death in the next couple of months if he fails or his life being extended by up to three years if he wins.

Mr Ross was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells, in May 2004.

He has been told by doctors that unless he is given Revlimid he will not survive beyond the autumn.

It would cost £5,000 per course of Revlimid and his medical team have requested funding for an initial three to four courses.

But in March West Sussex Primary Care Trust refused to fund the drug, even though leading cancer specialist Professor Karol Sikora has said he is “eminently suitable” for treatment.

Richard Clayton QC, representing Mr Ross, told Judge Simon Grenfell at London's High Court, the trust’s decision was “irrational” and it had erred in its estimate of the cost effectiveness of Revlimid.

He said: “This application for this drug is the end of the road for him.

“Either he gets the drug and is able to have life-prolonging treatment, or he doesn’t and treatment ceases, with inevitable consequences.”

He told the court that in a recent survey, 60% of the applications made for exceptional funding with the drug in England and Scotland had succeeded but the trust did not consider Mr Ross’ case was exceptional.

He said the case raised the “random and disquieting” problem of treatment depending on a patient’s postcode.

Arriving at court Mr Ross, from Horsham, described how he had become the victim of an “East-West” divide a postcode lottery between East Sussex and West Sussex.

He said he had spoken to another cancer patient at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London four weeks ago.

He said: “We got chatting and the subject of Revlimid came up.

“She told me she had applied for the same drug earlier this year and had been put on it.

“I live in West Sussex, and she lives 12 miles down the road in East Sussex.

“She was astonished when I told her I had been refused. How can it be that, in such a little distance, one can have it and one cannot?

“It should not be like that. It is not right that I should have to go to these lengths to get such an important, life-extending drug.”

Mr Ross was accompanied to court by his long-term companion Wendy Forbes-Newbegin, 52.

She said: “The mental anguish he has been going through is nothing short of appalling.

“The stress of his illness is bad enough, but to have to fight for this treatment has just been disgusting.

“I have been suffering from breast cancer, and he was supposed to be looking after me.”

Mr Ross, who has two children and four grandchildren, said: “If I don’t win and I get no further treatment I won’t be here for Christmas, it is as simple as that.”

He acknowledged that Revlimid is not a cheap drug.

But he expressed his frustration that “the Royal Marsden are sitting there with the drug in their fridges”.

Mr Ross has so far had six complete courses of chemotherapy and also received stem cell treatment at the Royal Marsden.

He responded well to the two other drugs currently being prescribed on the NHS for myeloma patients, Thalidomide and Velcade, but was forced to stop taking them because of painful side effects.

However, while Revlimid is readily available to patients across Europe and in the US, it has not yet been granted approval by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) and so is currently only being provided by some Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) on the NHS in exceptional circumstances.

Mr Clayton accused the trust of misunderstanding the evidence of the survival benefits of Revlimid.

He said the trust had failed to take into account “the slim but important chance” that the drug could prolong Mr Ross's life by more than a few months and it had made a fundamental error “when balancing clinical efficacy and cost”.

Martin Forde QC, appearing for the trust, said its officials had “every sympathy” for Mr Ross’s predicament.

The trust had, to some extent, been roundly criticised over its decision that it would not be cost-effective to fund Mr Ross’s treatment.

But it was having to make “agonising decisions” and considered some 600 similar cases every year.

It was doing its level best to use limited NHS funds “in the most efficient manner to benefit the largest number of patients”.

In Mr Ross’s case, the trust did not accept that it had adopted an irrational funding policy - “nor do we accept the policy was implemented in the course of this agonising decision in a perverse or irrational manner”.

The hearing continues on Monday.

The judge indicated that he hopes to give his ruling by the middle of next week.

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University Hospitals Leicester links directly to McCanns fraudulent Find Madeleine Fund

British sniffer dogs detected blood and the scent of death in McCanns apartment

One of the Directors of this fraudulent Fund is Dr Doug Skehan, a cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital. The Fund, which has raised over £1million from publicly donated money, has been used to help pay Dr Gerry McCanns mortgage.

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Link Drs Gerry and Kate McCann: Maddie died in apartment, there was no abduction says Portugese Police.

Welcome to Glenfield Hospital

NHS admit pregnancy test mistakes

An NHS laboratory in Sheffield has admitted it failed to properly carry out blood tests on pregnant women.

More than 50 women had to be re-tested for sexually transmitted infections (STI) when infections were not picked up by the laboratory in Sheffield.

Six women from Sheffield were re-tested and a smaller number from Rotherham.

An investigation revealed the mistake after a pregnant woman tested positive for HIV at a clinic at Hallamshire Hospital in 2006.

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NHS scientist, Martin Hatcher from Exeter, accused of paedophilia

Details can be found here

NHS C.diff deaths up 30% in year

DEATHS linked to the C.diff superbug have soared almost 30 per cent in a year, official figures revealed yesterday.

Last year 8,324 people had clostridium difficile when they died — up from 6,480.

The figure is more than twice the 3,757 C.diff mentions on death certificates in 2005 — and four times the 1,804 in 2001.

More than nine in ten died in an NHS hospital, with most of the rest in nursing homes.

But deaths linked to MRSA fell from 1,652 in 2006 to 1,593 last year, the Office for National Statistics said. It was the first time they have dropped since 1993.

The ONS pointed out that some of the C.diff increase may be due to more complete reporting on death certificates.

But shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley blasted the rise, calling PM Gordon Brown’s £50million hospital deep clean programme a “gimmick”.

He said: “The vast majority of these deaths could have been avoided if the Government had taken action at the right time.”

Lib Dem Norman Lamb called the toll “dreadful”.

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Shock Report Warns Elderly Going Hungry In Hospital

Elderly people are going hungry in hospital because staff fail to ensure they are fed, a charity has said.

An Age Concern study of 110 English and Welsh NHS trusts found 43% did not run protected mealtimes - where non-urgent work stops to make sure patients eat.

Age Concern's Patrick South said: "Tackling malnutrition should be a top priority for all NHS trusts."

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "We recognise that protected mealtimes are an issue."

'Unacceptable inconsistencies'

The study found that one in three NHS Trusts in England had not yet introduced a so-called red tray system, where meal trays are colour-coded to show which patients need help with eating.

It reported cases of patients being taken to the toilet and routine examinations being carried out during mealtimes, resulting in people missing out on food.

NHS trusts have not been specifically instructed by the government to introduce protected mealtimes or red tray systems.

And Age Concern argued that Healthcare Commission standards on nutrition did not go far enough.

Mr South, Age Concern's head of public affairs, said tackling malnutrition should be a priority for all trusts.

He added: "Our evidence shows unacceptable inconsistencies across the country.

"It's shocking that many older people still find themselves trapped within a 'postcode lottery of commitment' to improve nutritional standards on hospital wards."

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) received more than 29,000 reports of incidents concerning patient nutrition in 2007.

These included badly-fitted feeding tubes, frail patients unable to reach their food, people who had trouble swallowing being given incorrect meals and poor nutrition contributing towards deaths.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "We know that good nutrition is central to people's good health and ability to recover from illness, which is why in October 2007 we launched the Nutrition Action Plan, in conjunction with over 25 leading stakeholders.

"This aims to outline how nutritional care and hydration can be improved amongst vulnerable adults in all health and social care settings.

"In addition to this, the National Patient Safety Agency has already produced three Nutrition Fact Sheets as part of a series of 10 for clinical staff in the NHS."

article here

Cancer victims 'forced into debt' to pay for medicines freely available elsewhere in Europe

The NHS drugs rationing body is forcing cancer patients to remortgage their homes to pay for medicines freely available elsewhere in Europe, senior doctors warned yesterday.

More than 20 leading cancer consultants said they were 'dismayed' at guidance issued by Nice - the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - to refuse four kidney cancer drugs on the NHS.

Accusing Nice of rationing too severely, they called for a radical change in the way the NHS makes decisions.

Among the 26 signatories is Professor Karol Sikora, one of Britain's leading cancer experts and former chief of the World Health Organisation Cancer Programme.

The outcry follows draft guidelines from Nice this month on the drugs sunitinib, bevacizumab, sorafenib and temsirolimus.

The body concluded that the therapies - which can extend a patient's life by months - were not good value.

Cancer doctors warned that around 3,600 patients would die more quickly.
Now, in a letter to the Sunday Times, some of the UK's most eminent doctors have added to the criticism.

'Once again Nice has shown how poorly it assesses new cancer treatments,' they said.

complete article here

NHS v. Privatisation: Dead patients don't cost the NHS a thing: Toothless patients don't cost the NHS a thing either!

NHS dentists in England are extracting more teeth and providing patients with fewer x-rays,