The government has announced there will be a full public inquiry into the deaths in Stafford Hospital.
PUBLIC INQUIRY INTO SCANDAL HIT STAFFORD HOSPITAL
“Mr Lansley said: “We know only too well what happened at Mid-Staffordshire, in all its harrowing detail, and the failings of the trust itself.
“But we are still little closer to understanding how it was allowed to happen by the wider system.
“The families of those patients who suffered so dreadfully deserve to know.
“And so too does every NHS patient in this country.”
STAFFORD TIMELINE
November 2007 – Campaign group, Cure the NHS, set up amid concerns about care
March 2009 – Healthcare Commission report published, revealing “appalling” standards of care and at least 400 excess deaths
April 2009 – Two Department of Health reviews published, showing standards improving
May 2009 – The hospital says a report into the role of the chief executive, Martin Yeates, in the scandal will not be published
July 2009 – Ministers announce an independent inquiry into case, but stop short of a full public inquiry as demanded by campaigners
October 2009 – The trust is given the worst grade, weak, in the annual NHS ratings system
February 2010 – Independent inquiry published, describing patients left “sobbing and humiliated”
PREVIOUS SUMMARY
This saga will get forever longer……. It is the record of the failings of the NHS with particular reference to Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust. However, it seems appropriate to start the story many years before. Not in Mid Staffordshire, but in North Staffordshire.
THE PREAMBLE A resume of the failings in North Staffordshire and what happened and what did NOT happen thereafter can be found here:
NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE NHS TRUST – THE EVIDENCE
“I raised concerns regarding the current government policies of underfunding and rationing resulting in a serious risk to patient safety.”
“Rita has constantly been a thorn in the side of the authorities for pointing out what was happening in North Staffordshire NHS trust 10 years ago. She has been completely justified in her comments, and should have been listened to. She only ever wanted to do this to protect all those elderly patients who died. She has sacrificed her career to a relentless expose of the truth. I am full of admiration.”
________________________________
THE HEALTHCARE COMMISSION REPORT – MARCH 2009
INVESTIGATION INTO MID STAFFORDSHIRE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST
“The Healthcare Commission carried out this investigation into apparently high mortality rates in patients admitted as emergencies to Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust since April 2005, and the care provided to these patients.”
I will gradually track down all the related documentation. The articles are arranged chronologically, the most recent at the foot of the page.
________________________________
MARCH 17 March 2009
HELLO, IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?
“Words fail me when I consider the monumental incompetence in the higher reaches of the Department of Health.”
“They admit too many patients for the staffing levels to cope with and then everyone acts all surprised when people suffer and die. I have been overwhelmed and tried to refuse admissions to my ward. They came anyway. They dump them anywhere. The make us wake stable patients up at 4AM to move beds so that they can admit an acute patient from a&e onto my ward. Targets might get breached otherwise!!! Bastards. Listen. Staffordshire is not the only place where this stuff is happening.”
FAILING HOSPITAL CAUSED DEATHS
” A hospital’s “appalling” emergency care resulted in patients dying needlessly, the NHS watchdog has said. About 400 more people died at Stafford Hospital between 2005 and 2008 than would be expected, the Healthcare Commission said. “
“So why did the Staffordshire doctors not complain? Once upon a time, one of them did. A courageous doctor then working in a hospital a few miles away in North Staffordshire NHS Trust complained about the appalling medical care she had witnessed in her hospital. Look what happened to her. She was treated by the GMC in the way that Stalin used to treat political dissidents, including being accused of being mentally ill.”
MID STAFFORDSHIRE NHS TRUST REPORT – MAIN FINDINGS
“Assessing the priority of care for patients in accident and emergency (A&E) was routinely conducted by unqualified receptionists. One patient with an open fracture of the elbow waited for more than four hours covered in blood with no pain relief.”
“Dr Grumble has witnessed junior doctors being pressurised. It is so endemic that the pressure continues even when Dr Grumble is present. There is no insight into the fact that hassling a junior doctor into making a decision when he is not ready to do so is plain dangerous. Does this sort of thing happen in your hospital?”
18 March 2009
“These people have set the framework for this to happen. The hospital had to ‘save £10,000,000.’ They were 120 nurses short. A & E had one consultant, and receptionists were acting as triage nurses, and a broom cupboard* was used as a clinical decisions unit, getting people out of A & E according to targets.”
INDIVIDUAL MANAGEMENT FAILURES
“Alan Johnson and Gordon Brown are living in cloud cuckoo land. While some hospitals do manage to provide high standards of care, it is despite the government’s central megalomania, not because of it. The problems in Staffordshire General stem from No 10, the DoH and the top. The government’s top down control freakery and brutal imposition of various brainless reforms is the cause of problems like this. The management structure of the NHS is centrally driven and top down, there is no room for feedback, no room for local decisions, it is do as the government says or die, quite literally in some cases.”
“Well it’s just about enough to get the old bile flowing again. I have just watched the oleaginous (former Marxist) SoS for Health lie fluently to give a classic demonstration of central credit and local blame. He was absolutely clear that the failings at Stafford Hospital were nothing to with any government policy whatsoever, and everything to do with poor local management. Yes, all the blame is already being directed straight at the chief execs, who will of course nobly take the hit for the DoH.”
MID STAFFORDSHIRE – UNBELIEVABLE
“This may sound like the opening of the film Rashomon when the woodcutter came back from the court hearing of the murder of a Samurai: Unbelievable! Unbelievable! Unbelievable! Nobody is telling the truth. Not even the ghost of the killed Samurai.”
MID STAFFORDSHIRE NHS TRUST – THE KILLING FIELDS
“What the hell happened? Monitor that seemingly piss poor “independent regulator” paid millions of our money to provide “effective regulation-better patient care” (their words) failed miserably. They decided that the North Staffs Hospital was meeting all the criteria to become a “Foundation Trust”, they believed the information the “hospital” submitted, they didn’t talk to the Healthcare Commission (another piss poor institution). The Hospital itself decided that meeting targets were more important than patients, but nobody noticed.”
19 March 2009
“So the mighty leader spoke to his three acolytes, who were in charge of the hospitals of the people and knew how they were run.”
“Then you think, why didn’t any member of staff raise the alarm?! For a whole 3 years?! Even anonymously? Or, could it be that staff tried but were not listened to? .. We may never know. The hospital was not properly staffed, not properly equipped and not properly managed! So, why did it take the Health Care Commission 3 years to find out about it’s failings?!”
MID STAFFS: THE FIRST BIG CASE OF DEATH BY EMPTY WORDS
“Incompetence was an accomplice – it always is – but the main culprit was the cloak of evasive language. The entire health service floats on an Orwellian sea of newspeak strategies, policies, stakeholders, parameters, benchmarking, outcomes, actioning, pathfinding. Third-rate jargon, that great weapon of the inadequate, has become the accepted way to con the public – sorry, service users.”
20 March 2009
“The ink has barely dried on the report from Stafford Hospital, but that does not stop a certain sort of solicitor touting for business. I was appalled to see this appear today:”
22 March 2009
“For all that apparent encouragement, whistles were not blown by doctors or nurses in Stafford. Instead of independent professionals with the confidence to defend the public interest, the Healthcare Commission described sullen staff, bullied by managers and neglectful of patients. Doctors told its investigators that they had been “proletarianised”: turned from professionals with their own codes and standards into employees who must obey.”
“This is one of the reasons why I shall continue to blog: to point out the weaknesses of the current NHS, the way in which our leaders are slowly kicking the life out of (potentially) one of the best and fairest healthcare systems in the world, and why I and millions of others cannot nor will not vote for any of these second-rate politicians ever again.”
23 March 2009
“One should perhaps not hold Cynthia Bower completely responsible for all the deaths in Stafford. It takes several years for hospital services to become as bad as they were in Stafford. Cynthia Bower only took over that position in 2005. Some of the blame must fall on her predecessor, who was David “ex-communist Thatcherite” Nicholson. He has moved on from West Midlands Strategic Health Authority too. He is now Chief Executive of the National Health Service. Onwards and upwards, comrades.”
24 March 2009
COULD FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN NURSING PREVENT ANOTHER MID-STAFFS?
“There is a growing international evidence base that links staffing levels not only to quality of care but also to patient safety and mortality rates,’ he said, adding that the potential power of metrics to highlight both staffing levels and skillmix can be exploited to ensure that senior management address this.”
THE CANCER CLOCK TICKS PAST 60, LITHUANIA DOES BETTER, AND THE EVENTS NEAR THE POTERIES
“(We wrote this few days ago and this appears to be confirmed by a post in Dr Crippen’s blog post 23/03/09. Barely has the stink cleared and failure seems to be rewarded with the chief poacher(s) being promoted to chief gamekeeper(s) so it won’t happen again will it?) And they will (continue to) get away with it. To paraphrase a famous Party humanitarian from the past “one breach of confidentiality is a sackable offence, 400 deaths is a statistic and to be rewarded”.
MID STAFFS, THE VIRGIN AND THE WHISLEBLOWER
“The rest I think we all know by now, management cocked up, the Healthcare Commisssion’s predecessor cocked up,Monitor cocked up, the Healthcare Commission took too much time (as usual), the patients died, chief executive Martin Yeates cocked up but was only “suspended on full pay”, at least the chairman, Toni Brisby had the nouse to resign, the GMC cocked up (as usual) and the patients died. The “reason” propounded for the death of hundreds of patients is “the target culture”, wrong; the reason for the deaths of hundreds of patients is the lack of management, the lack of care, the lack facilities, the lack of trained medics, the lack of common sense, the lack of truth and the lack of honesty.”
25 March 2009
“Bizarrely, given our recent economic woes, freeing organisations to do as they please is still seen as a success. Yet we know that as the reins were eased in Stafford the management focus was instantly transferred from patient care to matters of money. It may seem odd but it is a sad truth that organisations generally value money more than lives.”
DEBATE ON MID-STAFFS HOSPITAL REJECTED
“Calls for an emergency debate to learn lessons from the hospital where 400 patients may have died due to poor care have been rejected by the House of Commons.”
26 March 2009
ON BLAME FOR MID-STAFFORDSHIRE
“Among the rather under-reported issues was the Healthcare Commission having issued the Trust with respectable, pass-level ratings during the whole period in question. HC chair Ian Kennedy responded to this in a letter to The Guardian, rather spectacularly missing the point. The Healthcare Commission is on stunningly shaky ground, because it was the regulator.”
27 March 2009
“The list of half-baked and half-witted ideas goes on and on, with very little on the positive side. I shall now return to the joys of the Tepranillo grape, and try to forget these idiots for 2 days. But all the time, vulnerable people are dying in places like Stafford as a result of their ‘initiatives’. I am losing patience with the lot of them.”
29 March 2009
“It seems that there are 10 hospitals with worse death rates than Mid-Staffordshire, and they are as follows (with their Hospital Standardised Mortality Rates in brackets (higher is worse)):”
MID STAFFORDSHIRE – MEDIA, MEDIA, MEDIA
“Time was when our newspapers can be relied on to expose great scandals and injustice. Remember Thalidomide and The Sunday Times? Mid-Staffordshire as far as I could work out could have been exposed a good deal earlier in the good old days of the Thalidomide affair. What has happened to the media in the new Millennium?”
30 March 2009
“The guide was the first time that comparative adjusted death rates for all NHS hospital trusts had ever been published in the UK. Dr Foster information tools are used by over 70% of the NHS and comparative information for the public is now also published on Dr Foster’s consumer-facing website: http://www.drfosterhealth.co.uk.”
31 March 2009
REMOVE FEAR FROM NHS WHISTLEBLOWERS
‘The NHS must change. When two constituents came to see me about the state of the hospital in which they work – not Stafford – complete with a dossier of photographs, they were terrified to leave it with me as they believed their jobs would be in jeopardy. It left me impotent to take any action.”
HITTING THE TARGET : MISSING THE POINT
“You’d have thought the NHS might have learned by now. Targets cause problems, and make things worse. The Stafford case proves this.”
APRIL 1 April 2009
“As I was driving in to work, I happened to hear an interview with Baroness Young on Radio 4. The leader of this new Quango starts work today: it is called the Care Quality Commission. This is a merging of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the Healthcare Commission and the Mental Health Act Commission. Suffused with smug authoritarianism, this uber-quangocrat had no difficulty batting away a number of questions about what has gone on in Stafford and Cannock Chase hospitals (see posts passim).”
8 April 2009
IS YOUR HOSPITAL OK? – DON’T ASK
“National Health Service staff are no longer being asked whether they would be happy to be treated in their own hospitals. The question, seen by some as one of the most revealing pointers to underperforming hospitals, has been dropped from an annual official survey. The Healthcare Commission, which conducts the survey, cited employees’ unhappiness with care standards as one of the concerns at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust. A subsequent investigation concluded that patients there died as a result of poor quality care.”
9 April 2009
WHAT WENT WRONG AT MID STAFFS?
“Whilst what was happening at Mid Staffs was extreme, milder aspects of the same issues are occurring all too often on wards up and down the country right now. Unmonitored.”
10 April 2009
WHO DARES BLOW THE WHISTLE? WHO DARES, LOSES
“How does the government deal with comrade whistleblowers? It purports to “welcome” them with open arms. Here is Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Health, discussing the health care crisis in Stafford:”
“The “old Lady” can be cured, but it will take enormous effort on the part of the Dept of Health to listen and understand what we want, to stop telling us what we need, to ask us which way the NHS should progress, to invest in the things that matter-nurses, equipment and resources, a mind set that makes the patient the most important people and allows the medics to provide the treatment we deserve and that doesn’t include overpaid, under worked clipboard carrying “managers” that are bleeding money and resources away from the NHS. The NHS is “under the weather” at the moment but with the right treatment the “old lady” will be up and around, and able to continue the mainly excellent care provided before the illness struck. “Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can’t retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time.” Bernard Baruch
11 April 2009
“STAFFORD HOSPITAL – MANAGERS SPENT MORE THAN £1,000,000 ON REDUNDANCIES DURING SCANDAL”
“More than 160 nurses left Stafford Hospital and were not replaced – as patients died in conditions later described as “appalling” by inspectors. The nurses actually left at a time when the hospital had vacancies for nursing staff. Decisions about treatment for emergency patients were left to receptionists and dehydrated patients were left to drink from flower vases during a crisis in which between 400 and 1,200 patients may have died needlessly in three years.”
ANDREW LANSLEY: WHY LABOUR CANNOT SAY “NEVER AGAIN” OVER HOSPITAL SCANDAL
“Two issues go to the very heart of the failings in Stafford General Hospital. Patients knew what was going terribly wrong but they had no means to make their voice heard, and no power to do anything about it. Those with the power on the board seemed oblivious to what was happening on the ward. This has to change The Healthcare Commission found that patients were often treated as numbers rather than people in a tick-box, target-driven culture. I regularly receive letters from doctors and nurses who are deeply frustrated that they are browbeaten into prioritising targets over clinical need. “
“Already we have seen in Stafford, and lots of other hospitals not mentioned in the press, what happens when managers and targets take precedence over professionals. How long will it be I wonder before we see a Panorama programme on poor general practice being delivered by a private company.”
14 April 2009
MID-STAFFORDSHIRE REDUNDANCIES UNDER SCRUTINY
“Mid Staffordshire hospital trust paid out £1.3m in redundancy payments between 2006 and 2009, figures disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act have revealed.”
DAVID CAMERON TO MEET STAFFORD HOSPITAL CAMPAIGNERS
“The Leader of the Opposition is meeting Julie Bailey, one of the organisers of the Cure the NHS campaign, at its headquarters in Stafford. Mrs Bailey is among a number of people who are calling for a public inquiry into the hospital scandal.”
QUEEN’S BLUNDERS ARE NOT ALARMING
“Queen’s figures compare well with other West Midlands hospitals such as Stafford’s Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which was recently the subject of a damning report from standards watchdog the Healthcare Commission.”
STAFFORD – UNEARTHING THE REASONS
“They will of course try to take credit (if you can believe this!) for unearthing their own cock-ups, they will blame the underlings, use this process to propose even more power for themselves. They will appoint placemen to investigate this process badly (you know they are placemen, because they have been to Buckingham Palace). They stand righteously saying that this will never happen again, as they conceal the metaphorical dagger dripping with blood behind their corporate backs. This group above others share a big responsibility in this whole wretched episode. If you read the dissembling of the whole process by Allyson Pollock and George Monbiot, you will get a clearer view; but they will all walk away from this terrible episode, like Pontius Pilate, washing their hands.”
15 April 2009
DAVID CAMERON MEETS CAMPAIGNERS AT STAFFORD HOSPITAL
“Mr Cameron said: “I am standing here in front of a hospital where there was the most appalling set of circumstances and people being treated incredibly badly. That is the priority for me, the NHS. That’s the priority for the British people.”
REVIEWS FOR 43 PATIENTS WHO DIED AT “APPALLING” HOSPITAL
“The case notes of 43 patients who died at a hospital slammed for its “appalling standards of care” are to be reviewed in a move dismissed by an NHS protest group a “publicity stunt”.
RCN BACKS INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO MID STAFFS
“Peter Carter, general secretary of the RCN, said: ‘We feel it is in everyone’s interests if there is a full independent inquiry. ‘We do not think it needs to be held in public, because people can often be more forthcoming if they are not appearing in some kind of ‘star chamber’, he added.”
A BIG THANK YOU TO PRIVATE EYE
“I would just like to thank Private Eye and MD for their kindness in featuring the material below. They are the only mainstream publication to feature a summary of the evidence.”
“There has been a recent debate about the rise of bloggers. Without the medical bloggers, there would be no accountability in the NHS. It is those few medical bloggers who raise concerns on a day to day basis who are the real heroes in the NHS. I also know that blogging provided me with a platform to raise concerns in a environment where the media and the government silenced the vital issues of Ward 87. Had the issues been addressed in 1999 and lessons learned and applied to the rest of the NHS, 2000 people would not have died at Mid Staffordshire.”
16 April 2009
TORIES WOULD END MONOPOLY OF NHS CHOICES
“The Conservative Party would remove NHS Choices from Department of Health control and force it to compete on the same terms as other healthcare information providers. In a document promising An NHS Information Revolution to Save Lives, the party says NHS Choices is failing to get adequate information to managers, clinicians and patients and that it is not sufficiently independent.”
“Comrades will recall the activities of ex-comrade Dr Rita Pal who, despite re-education, continues to spread scurrilous rumours about comrade patients dying unnecessarily in the Midlands. Comrade Pal has been deemed to be mentally ill. Her views are not to be taken seriously. Comrades caught reading Private Eye will be shot.”
“The problem is that confidentiality has always been a relative concept, and the numpties on the ‘panel’ could not see the bigger picture. So once again the authorities criticise the messenger, and ignore the message. The usual channels are hopeless for raising concerns. Ask all the previous whistleblowers.”
MID STAFFORDSHIRE? NOT JUST MID STAFFORDSHIRE!
“Perhaps the Health Secretary should go and look at the Third World hospitals, they may not indeed be as bad. They really do not have ridiculous targets and despite poor financing the doctors and nurses do the best they can. Also in the Third World, there would be riots if things like this happened.”
NO. NOT JUST MID-STAFFORDSHIRE – A MESSAGE TO ANGRY RELATIVES OF HOSPITAL PATIENTS IN ST. ELSEWHERE
“There is never a time during most of these shifts when the nurse is left alone, free of interruptions to go around and check on ALL his/her patients and make sure that they have everything that they need. Every single minute of many of these shifts are overbooked with multiple jobs that could get a nurse struck off and a patient harmed if they are missed. No matter how badly you (as the nurse) want to get around to everyone I can guarantee you that it isn’t going to happen and that it will be out of your control. Most shifts are like this. And even though it is out of your control you are still responsible for any bad outcomes. All I can do is work hard, prioritize, skip meals and push push push myself. We are not oblivious, uncaring, and thick. We are overwhelmed. It is triage people. Triage. Not holistic care.”
“This year the Commons All Party Parliamentary Group on Primary Care and Public Health is running an enquiry with the title? “Was the NHS Plan really a blueprint for the NHS – 10 years on?” You can contribute via this link.”
“Bullying is rife, with passive aggression the preferred option. But managers are so wonderful they need no regulatory body, and a quick golden parachute out of trouble, and a sideways move sorts out any problems. From such attention to detail we get the new chief exec of the Care Quality Commission from the SHA which turned a blind eye to failings in Staffordshire. Expect floggings to continue till staff morale improves.”
DOCTORS MUST ROOT OUT BAD CARE
“NHS staff – and in particular doctors – must do more to tackle bad care, the head of the new health regulator says. Care Quality Commission chairman Barbara Young said there was a culture of silence among health staff, as shown by the Stafford Hospital scandal. “
MY TEARS AT APPALLING A AND E WARD
“”I would come home literally in tears sometimes because I felt I couldn’t deliver the standard of nursing care that I wanted and that patients should be getting and indeed have the right to expect,” she told The Report. “There just physically wasn’t enough nursing staff available to go and attend to them and get a commode, help them get changed, change the bed – anything like that – and patients would be left for any amount of time before that was seen to. “It used to literally break my heart.”
NHS DRAFTS BBC BOSS GREG DYKE AS TROUBLESHOOTER DESPITE LACK OF RELEVANT EXPERIENCE
“Former BBC director-general Greg Dyke has been drafted in to improve leadership in the NHS.”
“Ministers are concerned about the poor quality of leadership in the health service, which has led to deaths in Stafford and in Kent, where 270 died in a C. diff outbreak.”
17 April 2009
“Who is this woman, ‘Baroness’ Young? Has she been reading the papers? Does she know what’s going on? Her ability to get herself publicity and to get her new organisation on the map is commendable. The problem is that we’ve had new organisations and new labour quangocrats coming out of our ears in the last 12 years [See Dr Rant for a measured assessment of the NHS Plan – 10 years on]. She is yet another person who has the temerity to spend her time telling people what to do, and – frankly – I really don’t care what she, and her lousy commission, has got to say. They come over as arrogant, overpowerful apparatchiks with plenty of power but no authority.”
20 April 2009
WHISTLEBLOWING – WHY IT’S DANGEROUS
“The no blame culture, and the organisation with a memory, that makes amends, and learns from mistakes is a total fiction. In the NHS there are vicious blame games afoot, and shooting the messenger is one strategy the management use to get unwelcome information off their patch. And professional bodies such as GMC and GTC will not stand up for whistle blowers, nor allow a public interest defence.”
“What this decision means is that all bloggers that have a professional registration are now skating on thin ice. Nurse bloggers, Doctor bloggers, Paramedic bloggers – all these are on a professional register and all end up writing about situations that trusts would rather were kept under the carpet. Might I also suggest that in the cases of hospital trusts wanting to get rid of a ‘troublesome’ staff member they may well turn to organisations like the NMC, HPC or GMC to do their work for them. I know I could point you to HPC rulings that appear to do that, not evidential to be sure, but it does look very much like that.”
SHOCK AT HOSPITAL DEATH FIGURES
” According to figures compiled last November and published in a Sunday newspaper, the Royal Bolton Hospital is seventh out of 10 trusts with higher mortality rates than Mid Staffordshire. Cllr Andy Morgan, chairman of Bolton Council’s health overview and scrutiny committee, said: “I am shocked by these figures and a full investigation into the circumstances behind these statistics is needed.”
“The role of clinicians in when the system fails the patients highlights the distribution of power and responsibility between managers and clinicians. The interaction between the two is complicated – if a doctor feels disempowered, does that give him an excuse to abdicate responsibility?”
NURSE FROM STAFFORDSHIRE TALKS
“Incident forms are getting used as toilet tissue by managment. Being caring and hardworking is just not enough. If I am in one bay I cannot see what is going on in another. People might fall. Their relatives accuse you of not caring and being lazy. I hate it. Love nursing, adore the patients but hate the bullshit.”
30 April 2009
MID STAFFS HOSPITAL MUST HIRE MORE NURSES
“Referrals from GPs always go through the A and E unit, Sir George says, contrary to good practice that allows them to be referred straight to the unit to speed the patients’ journey through hospital.”
CONFED PROPOSES PEER REVIEW TO AVOID MID STAFFORDSHIRE REPEAT
“The NHS Confederation has called on hospital trusts to invite others trusts’ directors to inspect their services to help prevent failures such as those at Mid Staffordshire foundation trust and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells trust.”
“As the independent regulator of NHS foundation trusts, we are very clear that this Trust will not be allowed to slip backwards. Monitor has already used its formal powers of intervention once at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust to appoint an Interim Chair and direct the appointment of an Interim Chief Executive. If the Trust fails to deliver the planned actions to address the issues identified within agreed timescales, Monitor will take whatever further regulatory action is necessary to deliver improved patient care.”
PROBE ORDERED INTO EAST LANCASHIRE A AND E HOSPITAL SERVICES
” “In Staffordshire, small but basic problems added up to disaster. “This is so important we should be able to take action immediately.” The board agreed to organise investigations, including visits to the department and requests to GPs for details of how their patients felt about emergency treatment.”
MID STAFFS REPORT: NEW DUTIES ON NHS TO PRVE PATIENT INVOLVEMENT
‘The government has announced that NHS organisations will have to publish information that proves they are involving patients to prevent a repeat of the failures at Mid Staffordshire foundation trust. A report for the Department of Health by national director for primary care David Colin-Thomé, published today, found that a significant reason that such poor care at the trust continued for so long was that patients were not listened to.”
1 May 2009
A MISSION TO PUT THE NHS ON THE RIGHT PATH
“There have been the damning criticisms of ineffective managers and care failings at Stafford Hospital (Mr Barnett is a member of the new National Leadership Council); concerns about the NHS’s inability to foster talent and innovation while overpaying executives (he has 20 years’ experience in human resources and organisational development); and fears of how the system will cope with a flu pandemic (he chaired the government group on pandemic workforce planning). “
2 MAY 2009
DEATH RATES VICTORY AFTER STAFFORD SCANDAL
“Mortality rates for all NHS hospitals in England have been placed on the health service central website, NHS Choices, helping patients to assess the quality of care offered before they are admitted for treatment. The move, introduced in the wake of the Stafford Hospital scandal which claimed hundreds of lives, is a victory for patients groups and The Sunday Telegraph, which has urged the Government to publish the data as part of our campaign Heal Our Hospitals.”
PETER CARTER RUCK. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH THE STAFFORD WHISTLEBLOWER?
“Rumour has it that libel law firm Peter Carter Ruck may be representing Stafford Hospital. Apparently, a medical whistleblower was due to raise concerns about the hospital in a prominent Sunday paper but the raptor law firm has been circling around and oddly the story isn’t running.”
3 May 2009
“MMC, Remedy UK, North-Staffordshire, Mid-Staffordshire, GMC, The London Deanery, The Highland Deanery, The Department of Health, the legal system and more, are all becoming intertwingled (a witching word) in a strange, complex way. It will be difficult for any doctor in this land who does not read the medical blogosphere on a daily basis to understand what is going on, and what are the connections and implications. This information is not easily available anywhere else.”
4 May 2009
WOMAN WHO EXPOSED STAFFORD HOSPITAL FAILINGS IN LINE FOR AWARD
A CAMPAIGNER who has fought tirelessly to expose the appalling conditions at shamed Stafford Hospital could clinch the Inspirational Woman of the Year title. Julie Bailey, who formed Cure the NHS campaign group to expose failings at Mid Staffordshire Foundation Hospitals Trust which caused at least 400 unnecessary deaths, is one of ten semi-finalists in the national award.”
5 May 2009
CNO ORDERS EXPERIENCED NURSE LEADER TO BE SEN TO MID STAFFS
“An experienced assistant director of nursing is to be deployed to Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust on the orders of chief nursing officer for England Dame Christine Beasley. The trust has also been instructed to recruit extra frontline nurses, a night matron and a professional development nurse in response to a review by the Department of Health’s emergency care tsar, published last week.”
6 MAY 2009
HOSPITAL BOSS’ FUTURE UNDECIDED
“Stafford Hospital has finally advertised for a permanent new chief executive – although the fate of suspended boss Martin Yeates has not yet been decided.”
THE FAIURE OF THE FOUNDATION TRUST MODEL
“she (Julie Bailey) is clearly an effective campaigner, and it is hard to believe that any of the well paid regulators would have intervened even now if it was not for her efforts. She runs a cafe on the main street in Stafford. Probably on about a quarter of the money of the people who run Monitor, the Healthcare Commission and the various parts of the NHS who reckoned that Mid Staffordshire was doing fine. None of them have lost their jobs”
999 MERGER NOT WORKING SAYS AMBULANCE SERVICE EX BOSS
“Then there was the Healthcare Commission’s recently published report on Mid Staffordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, in Stafford, which found that stroke patients were waiting all weekend for a CAT scan whereas before, ambulances automatically took them to hospitals where such facilities would be available immediately.”
“There is a major shortage of nurses worldwide. This is not surprising. This shortage has existed for a long time for lots of reasons. Despite the worldwide economic crisis, the shortage continues. This is due, in part to the spiraling costs of health care and the need for a skilled health care delivery work force that often compromises pay increases for new equipment.”
7 MAY 2009
HOSPITAL MANAGERS ACT ON MID-STAFFORDSHIRE FAILURES
“Around half of hospital managers and other staff believe elements of poor standards found at Mid Staffordshire foundation trust exist at their own organisation, a HSJ straw poll suggests.”
8 MAY 2009
DELAYED MANAGERS WHISTLEBLOWING CANARIES SING MID STAFFS NHS
” Health Service Journal (HSJ) in the UK deserve some credit for helping NHS managers at Mid Staffs NHS Trust to open up about the appalling standards of care . Does this mean NHS whistle blowing, though delayed beyond saving real lives previously is developing shrilling and thrilling biceps ? “
12 MAY 2009
THE NEW FACE OF NURSING – WHAT WILL THE CQC MEAN FOR NURSING
“The new super-regulator, the Care Quality Commission, took up its powers at the start of last month, marking the beginning of a raft of changes in healthcare regulation. Alastair McLellan talks to its chief executive, Cynthia Bower, about what the commission has in store for nurses”
The Witch Doctor – Link to a random page
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LINK TO UK MISSING KIDS WEBSITE
LINK TO MISSING PERSONS WEBSITE
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The Witch Doctor 
Thanks for this resource, WD; I shudder to think how long it must have taken to put together, but it’s very handy for the rest of us. I wish they would just put in legal minimum staffing levels; that would solve most of the problems that the NHS is incurring at the mo.
By: gabbyjulie on June 12, 2010
at 1:01 am