UK hospital care horrific - report
2010-02-24 20:06
London - An independent inquiry said on Tuesday it had found "shocking" standards of care at a National Health Service (NHS) hospital trust in the Midlands, including patients being left unwashed for up to a month.
The inquiry's chair Robert Francis said many patients treated by the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust had "suffered horrific experiences that will haunt them and their loved ones for the rest of their lives".
"I heard so many stories of shocking care... The deficiencies at the trust were systemic, deep-rooted and too fundamental to brush off as isolated incidents," he said.
Last year a damning report from the Healthcare Commission, an NHS watchdog, said it had found appalling standards of emergency care at the trust and said patients would have died as a consequence of the deficiencies it found.
The chair and chief executive of the trust, which runs an accident and emergency department at Stafford Hospital, stood down in March last year.
Cost cutting
Health Secretary Andy Burnham said the government and the trust's new board would accept all 18 of the inquiry's recommendations contained in a 900-page report.
"[The] report lays bare a dysfunctional organisation at every level and appalling failures of basic care over the period between 2005 and March 2009," he said.
"The care provided was totally unacceptable, and a fundamental breach of the values of the NHS."
Burnham said for the vast majority of patients, the NHS provided a good standard of care.
"However, where things go wrong we must face up to them and do everything in our power to ensure that these events can never happen again."
The inquiry said the trust's management had been "preoccupied with cost cutting, targets and processes" and lost sight of its fundamental responsibility to provide safe care.
Basic care neglected
It said problems at the trust were made worse in 2007 when it was required to save £10m and decided to achieve this through cuts in staffing levels, which were already insignificant.
The most basic elements of care were neglected, it said.
"Calls for help to use the bathroom were ignored and patients were left lying in soiled sheeting and sitting on commodes for hours, often feeling ashamed and afraid. Patients were left unwashed, at times for up to a month," it said.
"Staff failed to make basic observations and pain relief was provided late or in some cases not at all."
"The standards of hygiene were at times awful, with families forced to remove used bandages and dressings from public areas and clean toilets themselves for fear of catching infections."
Antony Sumara, the trust's new chief executive, said that since last March the trust had recruited extra nurses, revised its complaints procedure and increased staff training.
"We are determined to continue on our journey of improvement until we have achieved all that needs to be done to provide the care our patients and their families deserve," he said.