More patients at Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA) hospitals will die avoidable deaths unless major changes are made, a retired consultant doctor has said in an urgent warning.
Dr Glyn Smurthwaite, 65, was a consultant at Salford Royal who worked there from 1995 to 2024 and said it is ‘utterly unsafe’ and ‘toxic’.
It comes as dozens of patients have died or come to harm at NCA hospitals due to treatment delays and staffing errors according to the trusts’ own reports, with a workforce which is under extreme pressure and facing high levels of staff absences over sickness.
The NCA manages hospitals in Salford, Bury, Oldham and Rochdale, treating more than a million patients.
The Manchester Evening News (M.E.N) has spoken to patients who were treated at NCA hospitals, with experiences of people ‘screaming in pain’ while staff were ‘too busy’ to help, and a 76-year-old who spent 36 hours on a trolley in A&E and claimed she became ‘really poorly’ after experiencing the NCA’s standards of care.
Lengthy delays at NCA hospitals were linked with ‘28 deaths’ and 56 issues of ‘severe harm’, while problems diagnosing illness led to ten deaths last year.
The Northern Care Alliance said that it is facing challenges but is working to address concerns.
“I was appointed in 1995 and I left because the place was crumbling and toxic in 2023 early 2024,” Dr Glyn Smurthwaite said.
“I’ve been a campaigner ever since because the place is utterly unsafe, and it’s led by an utterly incompetent out of touch board who don’t have a clue what’s happening on the shop floor.
“It was failing miserably before the NCA was envisaged. It started to go wrong I would say 2008 or 2009, at this point around 2010 certainly things were getting worse.”
The retired consultant said there was a ‘system of governance that utterly failed and was incompetent’, and has called for the removal of the current board of directors.
Source: Manchester Evening Post, 23 August 2026
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