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Found 1,321 results
  1. News Article
    Health chiefs are designing an “early warning” system to detect and prevent future maternity care scandals before they happen, a health minister has said. Patient safety minister Nadine Dorries said she hoped the system would highlight hospitals and maternity units where mistakes were being made earlier. The former nurse also revealed the Department of Health and Social Care was drawing up a plan for a joint national curriculum for both midwives and obstetricians to make sure they had the skills to look after women safely. During a Parliamentary debate following the publication of a report into the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital care scandal, the minister was challenged by MPs to take action to prevent future scandals. The former health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, warned the failings at the Shropshire trust, where dozens of babies died or were left with permanent brain damage, could be repeated elsewhere. He said: “The biggest mistake in interpreting this report would be to think that what happened at Shrewsbury and Telford is a one-off — it may well not be, and we mustn't assume that it is.” Ms Dorries said: “Every woman should own her birth plan, be in control of what is happening to her during her delivery and I really hope ... this report is fundamental in how it's going to reform the maternity services across the UK going forward. Read full story Source: The Independent, 11 December 2020
  2. News Article
    A GP surgery that had been told it required improvement has been shut down after an inspection found patients could be at "risk of harm". Hampshire's Brockhurst Medical Centre had already been due to close on 31 December. However, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) suspended its registration with "immediate effect" following an unannounced inspection on Monday. Patients are expected to be transferred to other practices on Saturday. In September, a CQC assessment of the practice, on Brockhurst Road in Gosport, rated it overall as "requires improvement". The issues highlighted in the report included that the practice "did not have systems for the appropriate and safe use of medicines" and "there was a risk that some patients were not receiving the care and treatment they needed". Following Monday's inspection, Garry Higgins, of the CQC, said it had taken "urgent action" to suspend the registration of the GP surgery. "We took the action because we believe if we didn't people using the service may be exposed to the risk of harm," he added. Read full story Source: BBC News, 5 December 2020
  3. News Article
    Healthcare practitioners who committed child sexual abuse commonly did so under the guise of medical treatment, which went unchallenged by other staff even when unnecessary or inappropriate because of their position of trust, research has found. An independent inquiry into child sexual abuse report into abuse in healthcare settings between the 1960s and 2000s found that perpetrators were most commonly male GPs or healthcare practitioners with routine clinical access to children. As a result their behaviour was not questioned by colleagues, the children or their parents. In many cases patients’ healthcare needs related to physical, psychological and sexual abuse they suffered at home. They spoke of attending health institutions seeking treatment, care and recovery, but were instead subjected to sexual abuse. This included fondling, exposing children to adult sexuality, and violations of privacy. More than half who shared their experiences described suffering sexual abuse by penetration. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 4 December 2020
  4. News Article
    Eleven patients have suffered harm after being kept waiting in ambulances outside accident and emergency departments, a review has found. South East Coast Ambulance (SECamb) Service Foundation Trust launched the review after a specific incident at Medway Foundation Trust on Monday 16 November. Although details of the incident have not been released, HSJ has been told one patient waited for nine hours before being seen in the trust’s A&E department that day. The review covered all long waits across SECAmb’s area over the last few weeks. Out of 120 cases examined, 11 patients were found to have suffered some degree of harm, SECAmb’s executive director of nursing and quality Bethan Eaton-Haskins told Kent’s health overview and scrutiny committee last week. However, the trust has not revealed which hospitals were involved. Ms Eaton-Haskins said the ambulance trust was “struggling significantly” with handovers and expecting the recent pressure experienced at Medway FT to affect the county’s other hospitals soon. However, she indicated some other trusts in Surrey and Sussex had also had long delays. Ambulance services have been concerned for some time that handover delays could pose significant problems this winter. They are thought to have contributed to the North West Ambulance Service Trust declaring a major incident earlier this month. HSJ has also been told of waits of several hours in other ambulance trusts. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 1 December 2020
  5. News Article
    A network of specialist surgical mesh removal centres is to be set up around England, with a launch planned for April 2021. The move implements a recommendation of the review, chaired by the Conservative peer and former health minister Julia Cumberlege, into three treatments which caused avoidable harm. These included the use of transvaginal tape and pelvic mesh to treat pelvic organ prolapse and urinary incontinence. The review, which published its report in July, heard “harrowing” stories about women left with serious complications. The mesh is hard to remove and only a few surgeons in the UK are able to carry out the procedure. Read full story (paywalled) Source: BMJ, 25 November 2020
  6. News Article
    Ministers are to invest millions in making Britain's maternity wards safer, it was announced on Wednesday after The Independent exposed a series of cases in which mothers and babies had suffered avoidable harm during childbirth. The new money, almost £10m, was announced as part of the spending review unveiled by Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, in the Commons and will deliver new pilots of what the Treasury called “cutting-edge training” to improve practice during childbirth. Significant failings in maternity safety units across the NHS have devastated families and left some babies needing tens of millions of pounds to look after them in later life. In November last year, The Independent joined with the charity Baby Lifeline to call for a new fund to be set up after exposing the single largest maternity scandal in NHS history at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust, where dozens of babies have died or been left with brain damage. The new funding will also cover the final year of the independent investigation into the Shrewsbury trust. Read full story Source: The Independent, 26 November 2020
  7. News Article
    Several patients were harmed after leaders at an acute trust failed to act on multiple concerns being raised about a surgeon, documents obtained by HSJ suggest. The documents reveal a catalogue of governance and safety concerns over the trauma and orthopaedics department at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust in the last three years. They include an external review which described the process for investigating clinical incidents as akin to “marking your own homework” and found the T&O department at Royal Lancaster Infirmary driven by “internecine squabbles”. It comes as the trust, which is widely known for a patient safety scandal within its maternity department, also faces a major investigation into whistleblowing concerns over its urology services. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 November 2020
  8. News Article
    Lawyers have begun legal action on behalf of 200 UK women against the makers of a sterilisation device, after claims of illness and pain. The device, a small coil called Essure, was implanted to prevent pregnancies. Manufacturer Bayer has already set aside more than $1.6bn (£1.2bn) to settle claims from almost 40,000 women in the US. It has withdrawn the device from the market for commercial reasons but says it stands by its safety and efficacy. The metal coil was inserted into the fallopian tube to cause scarring, blocking the tube and preventing pregnancy. Introduced in 2002, it was promoted as an easy, non-surgical procedure - a new era in sterilisation. But many women who had the device fitted have now either had hysterectomies or are waiting for procedures to remove the device. Tracey Pitcher, who lives in Hampshire, felt she had completed her family and did not want any more children. Her doctor strongly encouraged her to have an Essure device fitted, she says. But after it had been, she began to feel very unwell. "I just started to have heavy periods, migraines, which I had only ever had when I was pregnant so they were hormonal," she says. "My back was so painful I'd wake up crying in the middle of the night with pains in my hips and my back." Tracey says she battled to persuade doctors to take her symptoms seriously. But the only information she received was from a Facebook group. "... there's nobody there, there's no support apart from people that we've found ourselves, no-one will listen, because it's just 'women's things'." Read full story Source: BBC News, 15 November 2020
  9. News Article
    A nurse is due in court charged with eight counts of murder following an investigation into baby deaths at the Countess of Chester hospital neonatal unit in Cheshire. Lucy Letby, 30, is due to appear at Warrington magistrates court on Thursday. She was arrested for a third time on Tuesday as part of the investigation into the hospital, which began in 2017. A force spokesman said: “The Crown Prosecution Service has authorised Cheshire police to charge a healthcare professional with murder in connection with an ongoing investigation into a number of baby deaths at the Countess of Chester hospital.” He said Letby was facing eight charges of murder and 10 charges of attempted murder relating to the period from June 2015 to June 2016. On Tuesday, police said parents of all the babies involved were being kept fully updated on developments and were being supported by officers. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 11 November 2020
  10. News Article
    Study finds 54 days after discharge, 69% of patients still had fatigue, and 53% were suffering from persistent breathlessness. Almost seven out of 10 patients hospitalised due to coronavirus still suffer from debilitating symptoms more than seven weeks after being discharged, according to a new study. Researchers from the University College London (UCL) division of medicine, in collaboration with with clinicians at the Royal Free London (RFL) and UCL, followed 384 patients who had tested positive and had been treated at Barnet Hospital, the Royal Free Hospital or UCLH. Collectively the average length of stay in hospital was 6.5 days. The team found that 54 days after discharge, 69% of patients were still experiencing fatigue, and 53% were suffering from persistent breathlessness. They also found that 34% still had a cough and 15% reported depression. In addition 38% of chest radiographs (X-rays) remained abnormal and 9% were getting worse. Dr Swapna Mandal, an honorary clinical associate professor at UCL division of medicine, said the data shows so-called long COVID is a real phenomenon and that further research is needed to understand how the symptoms of COVID-19 can be treated over an extended period. She said: "Patients whose COVID-19 illness is serious enough for them to require hospital care often continue to suffer significant symptoms for many weeks after their discharge." Read full story Source: Sky News, 11 November 2020
  11. News Article
    Hospital hotspots for COVID-19 have been highlighted in a new report by safety investigators. The report by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) makes a series of observations to help the health service reduce the spread of coronavirus in healthcare settings. Hospital hotspots for COVID-19 included the central nurses’ stations and areas where computers and medical notes were shared, the HSIB found. The investigation was initiated after a Sage report in May which found that 20% of hospital patients were reporting symptoms of Covid-19 seven days following admission – suggesting that their infection may have been acquired in hospital. In response to the report, NHS England and NHS Improvement confirmed they would publish nosocomial – another term for hospital acquired infections – transmission rates from trusts, the HSIB said. Read full story Source: Express and Star, 28 October 2020
  12. News Article
    Minority ethnic people in UK were ‘overexposed, under protected, stigmatised and overlooked’, new review finds. Structural racism led to the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities, a review by Doreen Lawrence has concluded. The report, commissioned by Labour, contradicts the government’s adviser on ethnicity, Dr Raghib Ali, who last week dismissed claims that inequalities within government, health, employment and the education system help to explain why COVID-19 killed disproportionately more people from minority ethnic communities. Lady Lawrence’s review found BAME people are over-represented in public-facing industries where they cannot work from home, are more likely to live in overcrowded housing and have been put at risk by the government’s alleged failure to facilitate Covid-secure workplaces. She demanded that the government set out an urgent winter plan to tackle the disproportionate impact of Covid on BAME people and ensure comprehensive ethnicity data is collected across the NHS and social care. The report, entitled An Avoidable Crisis, also criticises politicians for demonising minorities, such as when Donald Trump used the phrase “the Chinese virus”. The report, which is based on submissions and conversations over Zoom featuring “heart-wrenching stories” as well as quantitative data, issued the following 20 recommendations: Set out an urgent plan for tackling the disproportionate impact of Covid on ethnic minorities Implement a national strategy to tackle health inequalities Suspend ‘no recourse to public funds’ during Covid Conduct a review of the impact of NRPF on public health and health inequalities Ensure Covid-19 cases from the workplace are properly recorded Strengthen Covid-19 risk assessments Improve access to PPE in all high-risk workplaces Give targeted support to people who are struggling to self-isolate Ensure protection and an end to discrimination for renters Raise the local housing allowance and address the root causes of homelessness Urgently conduct equality impact assessments on the government’s Covid support schemes Plan to prevent the stigmatisation of communities during Covid-19 Urgently legislate to tackle online harms Collect and publish better ethnicity data Implement a race equality strategy Ensure all policies and programmes help tackle structural inequality Introduce mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting End the ‘hostile environment’ Reform the curriculum Take action to close the attainment gap Read full story Source: The Guardian, 28 October 2020
  13. News Article
    In ‘Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed For Men’ author Caroline Criado Perez writes about Rachael, a woman who suffered years of severe and incapacitating pain during her period. It takes, on average, eight years for women in the UK to obtain a diagnoses of endometriosis. In fact, for over a decade, there has been no improvement in diagnostic times for women living with the debilitating condition. You might think, given the difficulty so many women experience in having their symptoms translated into a diagnosis, that endometriosis is a rare condition that doctors perhaps don’t encounter all that often. Yet it is something that affects one in ten women – so what is going wrong? Read the full article here in The Scotsman
  14. News Article
    The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has called for ‘ministerial ownership’ to end the ‘inhumane’ care of patients with learning difficulties and autism in hospital – after finding some cases where people had been held in long-term segregation for more than 10 years. Following its second review into the uses of restraint and segregation on people with a learning difficulty, autism and mental health problems, the CQC has warned it “cannot be confident that their human rights are upheld, let alone be confident that they are supported to live fulfilling lives”. The review was ordered by health and social care secretary Matt Hancock in late 2018 in response to mounting concerns about the quality of care in these areas. According to the report, published today, inspectors found examples people being in long-term segregation for at least 13 years, and in hospital for up to 25 years. It also found evidence showing the proportion of children from a black or black British background subjected to prolonged seclusion on child and adolescent mental health wards was almost four times that of other ethnicities. Looking at care received in hospital the CQC found many care plans were “generic” and “meaningless” and patients did not have access to any therapeutic care. Reviewers also found people’s physical healthcare needs were overlooked. One women was left in pain for several months due to her provider failing to get medical treatment. The regulator also reviewed the use of restrictive practices within community settings. While it found higher quality care, and the use of restrictive practices was less common, it said there was no national reporting system for this sector. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 22 October 2020
  15. News Article
    When the pain in her shoulders and weakness in her right leg started two years ago, Giovanna Ippolito thought it was just part of getting older — that's until the 46-year-old's doctor ordered an X-ray that showed a five-centimetre long, broken needle embedded in her spine. It was a medical error that took more than a decade to discover — after medical staff at the time failed to report it. Exactly when the needle was left in Ippolito's spine is unclear, but she says she's only had something injected into her back twice — during the birth of her son in 2002 and her daughter in 2004. Ippolito says she believes the needle broke off when medical staff at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital in nearby Richmond Hill (called York Central Hospital at the time) administered a spinal block or an epidural during one of the births. She's now locked in a battle with the hospital for answers and accountability. But experts say, with a system that's stacked against Canadians harmed by medical errors, it's likely no one will have to take responsibility. More than 132,000 patients experienced some kind of medical harm — something both preventable and serious enough to require treatment or a longer hospital stay — in 2018-19, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, an independent, not-for-profit organization that collects information on the country's health systems. Read full story Source: CBC, 5 October 2020
  16. News Article
    An NHS trust has offered an unreserved apology to an elderly patient and his family after they accused hospital staff of restraining him 19 times in order to forcibly administer treatment. East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust admitted that care for the man, who has dementia, “fell far short” of what patients should expect. The 77-year-old had been admitted to the William Harvey Hospital last November for urinary retention problems, according to a recent BBC investigation. In February, The Independent revealed that a police investigation had been launched into an alleged assault against an elderly man at the hospital after nurses and carers were filmed by hospital security staff holding the man’s arms, legs and face down while they inserted a catheter. A whistleblower told The Independent that the incident was being covered up by the trust and staff were told: “Don’t discuss it, don’t refer to it at all.” On Wednesday, the trust said its investigation had found a failure to alert senior medics to the difficulties being experienced in caring for the patient. Changes to dementia care including ward reorganisation, training and recruitment are underway, said a spokesperson, who added: “We apologise unreservedly to the patient and his family for the failings in his care, this fell far short of what patients should expect.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 14 October 2020
  17. News Article
    The announcement on Friday by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) that it will bring criminal charges against an NHS trust for failing to provide safe care to a patient is a hugely significant milestone in efforts to bring about greater accountability and safer care in the health service. The CQC has had the power to bring such prosecutions against hospitals since April 2015 when it was given a suite of new legal powers to hold hospitals to account on the care they give to their patients. Bringing in the new laws, the so-called fundamental standards of care, was one of the most significant actions taken after the care disaster at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust, where hundreds of patients suffered shocking neglect, with some dying as a result. Prosecuting East Kent Hospitals University Trust over the tragic 2017 death of baby Harry Richford is a big step for the CQC and a consequence of the long-forgotten battles of many patients and families in Stafford who were told they were wrong in their complaints against the hospital. It will almost certainly lead to more calls for criminal charges against hospitals from families who have been failed. There are countless examples of NHS trusts not acting on safety warnings and patients coming to harm as a result. Just this week an inquest into the case of baby Wynter Andrews at Nottingham University Trust revealed fears over safety had been highlighted to the trust board 10 months before her death. At Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust there are hundreds of families asking the same questions as more evidence emerges of long-standing failures to learn from its mistakes. CQC's chief executive, Ian Trenholm, has provoked anger among NHS leaders and clinicians when he advocated taking a tougher line when trusts break the law. But it is unlikely the CQC will launch a slew of prosecutions. It has said it will bring cases only where it sees patterns of behaviour and systemic failings. That is the correct approach as healthcare is complex and single errors will sadly happen despite everyone doing their best. Read full story Source: The Independent, 10 October 2020
  18. News Article
    NHS Payouts linked to medication blunders have doubled in six years, fuelling record spending, official figures show. The NHS figures show that in 2019/20, the health service spent £24.3 million on negligence claims relating to medication errors - up from £12.8 million in 2013/14. The statistics show that in the past 15 years, almost £220 million has been spent on claims relating to the blunders. Previous research has suggested that medication errors may be killing up to 22,000 patients in England every year. Errors occur when patients are given the wrong drugs, doses which are too high or low, or medicines which cause dangerous reactions. In some cases, patients have been given medication which was intended for another person entirely, sometimes with fatal consequences. Other studies suggest that 1 in 12 prescriptions dispensed by the NHS involve a mistake in medication, dose or length of course. In some cases, patients have died after being given a dose of morphine ten times that which should have been administered, with other fatalities involving fatal reactions. Confusion often occurs when drugs are not labelled clearly, or when packaging of different medications looks similar. Jeremy Hunt, now chairman of the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, said the NHS needed to make far more progress preventing harms, instead of seeing an ever increasing negligence bill. He said: “It is nothing short of immoral that we often spend more cleaning up the mess of numerous tragedies in the courts, than we actually do on the doctors and nurses who could prevent them." Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 3 October 2020
  19. News Article
    The NHS 111 service has permanently stopped nurses and other healthcare professionals in a clinical division handling calls with people suspected of having COVID-19 after an audit of recorded calls found more than 60% were not safe. The audit was triggered in July after many of the medical professionals recruited to work in that clinical division of the 111 service sounded the alarm, saying they did not feel “properly skilled and competent” to fulfil such a critical role. An investigation was launched into several individual cases after the initial review found that assurances could not be given “in regard to the safety of these calls”, according to an email, seen by the Guardian, from the clinical assurance director of the National Covid-19 Pandemic Response Service. In a further email on 14 August, she told staff that after listening to a “significant number” of calls “so far over 60% … have not passed the criteria demonstrating a safe call”. A number of “clinical incidents” were being investigated, she said, because some calls “may have resulted in harm”. One case had been “escalated as a serious untoward incident with potential harm to the patient”. NHS England declined to answer questions about any aspect of these apparent safety failings, saying it was the responsibility of the South Central ambulance service (SCAS), which set up a section of NHS 111 called the Covid-19 Clinical Assessment Service (CCAS). Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 October 2020
  20. News Article
    The surgeon at the centre of a body parts scandal operated on patients who were dangerously sedated so that their procedures could be carried out simultaneously, according to a leaked investigation seen by The Independent. Renowned hip surgeon Derek McMinn and two anaesthetists at Edgbaston Hospital, Birmingham, were accused of putting “income before patient safety” in the internal investigation for BMI Healthcare, which runs the hospital. It comes after a separate review found that McMinn had hoarded more than 5,000 bone samples from his patients without a licence or proper permission to do so over a period of 25 years, breaching legal and ethical guidelines. Police are investigating a possible breach of the Human Tissue Act. According to the report on sedation by an expert from another hospital, the two anaesthetists, Imran Ahmed and Gauhar Sharih, sedated patients for so long that their blood pressure fell to dangerous levels in order to allow McMinn to carry out near-simultaneous surgery. It found this meant long delays in the operations starting, with one sedated patient being subjected to prolonged anaesthesia for longer than one hour and 40 minutes – recommended best practice is 30 minutes. Another patient was apparently "abandoned" for an hour and 26 minutes after their surgery was only partially completed while McMinn began operating on another patient. The report’s author, expert anaesthetist Dr Dhushyanthan Kumar of Coventry’s University Hospital, said this was unsafe practice by all three doctors and urged BMI Healthcare to carry out a review of patients to see if any had suffered lasting brain damage. Both anaesthetists work for the NHS – Ahmed at Dudley Group of Hospitals, Sharih at University Hospitals Birmingham – without restrictions on their ability to practise. Read full story Source: The Independent, 30 September 2020
  21. News Article
    Too many English hospitals risk repeating maternity scandals involving avoidable baby deaths and brain injury because staff are too frightened to raise concerns, the chief inspector of hospitals has warned. Speaking at the opening session of an inquiry into the safety of maternity units by the health select committee, Prof Ted Baker, chief inspector of hospitals for the Care Quality Commission, said: “There are too many cases when tragedy strikes because services are not not doing their job well enough.” Baker admitted that 38% of such services were deemed to require improvement for patient safety and some could get even worse. “There is a significant number of services that are not achieving the level of safety they should,” he said. He said many NHS maternity units were in danger of repeating fatal mistakes made at what became the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust (UHMBT), despite a high profile 2015 report finding that a “lethal mix” of failings at almost every level led to the unnecessary deaths of one mother and 11 babies. “Five years on from Morecombe Bay we have still not learned all the lessons,” Baker said. “[The] Morecombe Bay [report] did talk about about dysfunctional teams and midwives and obstetricians not working effectively together, and poor investigations without learning taking place. And I think those elements are what we are still finding in other services.” Baker urged hospital managers to encourage staff to whistleblow about problems without fear of recrimination. He said: “The reason why people are frightened to raise concerns is because of the culture in the units in which they work. A healthy culture would mean that people routinely raise concerns. But raising concerns is regarded as being a difficult member of the team.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 29 September 2020
  22. News Article
    At least 18 serious cases are being investigated by NHS bosses after GP and dermatology services were stripped from private medical company. The Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) confirmed on Monday an independent review was taking place. It will see if delays to treatment for thousands of patients using DMC Healthcare services "caused harm". The NHS removed contracts worth £4.1m a year from the private firm in July. DMC was responsible for nearly 60,000 patients at nine surgeries in Medway, and skin condition services in other parts of Kent, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said. In north Kent, there were 1,855 patients needing urgent treatment and a further 7,500 on the dermatology service waiting list. Of those, 700 had been waiting more than a year. Nikki Teesdale, from Kent and Medway's CCG, said it was "too early" to reach definitive conclusions around the 18 serious cases. Speaking to Kent and Medway's joint health scrutiny committee on Monday she said of the 18, five had been waiting "significant periods of time" for cancer services. "Until we have got those patients through those treatment programmes, we are not able to determine what the level of harm has been," she added. Read full story Source: BBC News, 29 September 2020
  23. News Article
    Accidents on maternity wards cost the NHS nearly £1 billion last year, Jeremy Hunt, the chairman of the Commons health committee, has revealed. The former health secretary said the bill for maternity legal action was nearly twice the amount spent on maternity doctors in England. It was part of the NHS’s £2.4 billion total legal fees and compensation bill, up £137 million on the previous year. Mr Hunt has also told the Daily Mail there is evidence that hospitals are failing to provide details of avoidable deaths despite being ordered to do so three years ago as he highlighted “appalling high” figures which showed that up to 150 lives are being lost needlessly every week in public hospitals. Responding to the figures, Mr Hunt said: "Something has gone badly wrong." In 2017, he told trusts to publish data on the number of avoidable deaths among patients in their care. But freedom of information responses from 59 hospital trusts, about half the total, found less than a quarter gave meaningful data on avoidable deaths. Mr Hunt cited “major cultural challenges” which he blamed for preventing doctors and nurses from accepting any blame. He blamed lawyers who get involved “almost immediately” once something goes wrong with a patient’s care. “Doctors, nurses and midwives worry they could lose their licence if they are found to have made a mistake. Hospital managers worry about the reputation of their organisation,” he added. Mr Hunt said: “We have appallingly high levels of avoidable harm and death in our healthcare system. We seem to just accept it as inevitable.” An NHS spokesman said: “Delivering the safest possible health service for patients is a priority, and the national policy on learning from deaths is clear that hospitals must publish this information every three months, as well as an annual summary, so that they are clear about any problems that have been identified and how they are being addressed. Read full story Source: The Telegraph, 18 September 2020
  24. News Article
    A damning report into Devon’s NHS 111 and out of hours GP service has revealed shocking stories of patients who have either had their health put at risk or tragically died due to the service being in need of urgent improvement. Devon Doctors Limited, which provides an Urgent Integrated Care Service (UICS) across Devon and Somerset, was inspected by independent health and social care regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in July, after concerns were raised about the service. They included the care and treatment of patients, deaths and serious incidents, call waits, staff shortages, and low morale. Inspectors found 'deep rooted issues'. The CQC concluded it was not assured that patients were being treated promptly enough and, in some cases, they had not received safe care or treatment. It is calling for the service to make urgent improvements which will be closely monitored. Since August 2019, the report stated Devon Doctors had received 179 complaints. Nine had been identified by the service as incidents of high risk of harm and six had been identified by the service as incidents of moderate risk of harm. These had been recorded on the service’s significant event log. However, on review, the CQC identified an additional 30 events from the complaints log which could also have been classed as either moderate or high risk of harm. Read full story Source: Devon Live, 15 September 2020
  25. News Article
    A survey of members of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has found that almost two thirds (60%) of doctors worry that patients in their care have suffered harm or complications following diagnosis or treatment delays during the pandemic, while almost all doctors (94%) are concerned about the general indirect impact of COVID-19 on their patients. This is also compounded by the difficulty doctors are finding in accessing diagnostic testing for their patients. Only 29% of doctors report experiencing no delays in accessing endoscopy testing (one of the main diagnostic tests used by doctors) for inpatients, decreasing to just 8% for outpatients. Only 5% of doctors feel that their organisations are fully prepared for a potential second wave of COVID-19 infection, and almost two thirds (64%) say they haven’t been involved in any discussions about preparations for a second wave of the virus. While the government’s promise to roll out flu vaccines to millions more people is welcome, the RCP recently set several more priorities to help prepare the health service for future waves of COVID-19, including the need to ensure the NHS estate is fully able to cope. Only 5% say they wanted an antibody test for COVID-19 but were unable to access one. Of those tested, a quarter (25%) were positive, with little or no difference when it came to gender, between white and BAME doctors, trainees and consultants or between London and the rest of England. Professor Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “Delays to treatment are so often a major issue for the NHS but as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s fair to say we’ve reached crisis point. Doctors are, understandably, gravely concerned that their patients’ health will have deteriorated to the point where they will need much more extensive treatment than previously, at a time when NHS resources are already incredibly depleted." “We also cannot underestimate the need to prepare for a second wave of COVID-19 infection, which threatens to compound the situation. Without careful and rigorous preparation, a second wave coupled with the winter flu season, could overwhelm the NHS.” Source: Royal College of Physicians, 5 August 2020
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