We are sure that like us, you felt an immense degree of shock and anger over the reports reagdrding the extent of the emergency care failings at Stafford General Hospital. It is unbelieveable that in this day and age a hospital is allowed to decline so much that 400 'excess deaths' can occur.
This data came from a Healthcare Commission report into the hospital published this week - although it did caveat that the cause of these 'excess deaths' could not be directly attributed to bad care.
According to the report almost 'every stage' of Staffords emergency service department had major failings, with managers consistently pursuing target levels ahead of ordinary patient care.
It seems that this combined with low levels of staff, inadequate nursing, poor levels of equipment, no real leadership, lack of training and ineffective problem management systems contributed to the overall shambolic nature of this department.
The Prime Minister Gordon Brown has today publicly apologised for the failing hospital. He said:
"We do apologise to those people who have suffered as a result of the mistakes that have been made at Stafford Hospital."
He did not however place any blame upon the target based system of managing NHS hospitals, instead highlighting "low standards of management".
What is of particular worry to us here at YPHI is that we are not entirely confident that Stafford is the only NHS hospital that has suffered from such a devastating combination of failures. Are poor management practices and unrealistic target levels turning too many of our hospitals into Spreadsheet-run establishments with little regard paid to patient care? or is this entire sorry episode sympomatic of a system creaking under the weight of an ageing population and rising crime levels?
Let us know your opinions.
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