Posted on 03/16/2009 9:19:21 PM PDT by Netizen
A damning report to be released tomorrow by the Healthcare Commission will outline a catalogue of failings at a hospital trust blinded by a drive to save money and abide by Government waiting-time targets.
An advance copy of the report seen by the Daily Mail estimated 'at least' 400 deaths between 2005 and 2008 could not be accounted for by 'other factors or by chance variation'.
-snip-
The commission found that the A&E department was understaffed and poorly equipped; a shortage of nurses meant receptionists were left to assess patients; nurses were not trained to read cardiac monitors; patients received incorrect medication, or none at all, and were left for hours in wet or soiled bedding; there were too few specialist beds for stroke patients; essential equipment such as defibrillators was missing or not working and accepted standards of practice in infection control were not maintained.
_snip-
'The report findings tally with what they have told me, especially about patients being left in dirty bedding. The Government has poured money into the hospitals but this just shows that money on its own will not solve the problems.
'There is far too much bureaucracy and too little front-line service in the NHS.'
The report said a shortage of doctors meant they 'were moved from treating seriously ill patients to deal with those with more minor ailments, in order to avoid breaching the four-hour waiting time target.'
It was also critical of the trust's axing of 150 jobs - many of them nurses - over 2006/07 as part of a plan to save £10million to meet national cost-saving targets.
The commission launched an investigation in March last year after figures revealed high mortality rates for patients admitted as emergencies, which the trust had failed to investigate adequately.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Just thought people might like to see what government run health car may look like.
The government can't run the VA, how do they think they can run a nationalized health care system?
Coming soon to a hospital near you.
Thanks, Zero.
sounds like a VA hospital
What part of "But the Medical Care Was Free" do you people not understand.?
Everyday, routine occurrences currently in any hospital.
Not at the hospital I was in for several days in October. No receptionist pretending to be a nurse. Given meds on time. Great treatment by nurses and staff. Machinery functioned normally. Great food, just an added bonus. :)
NHS executives are famous for “solving” problems by issuing edicts, without any concern for the consequences. It’s much easier than actually addressing the problem and has the added advantage of not impacting their tennis schedule. The waiting time rule is one example.
Feel very fortunate. After 30 years employed in a Level 1 Hospital, on midnites, in Detroit, your hospital stay is no where near what I dealt with daily.
Everyday, routine occurrences currently in any hospital.
Not even every hospital in the UK.
‘DREADFUL, ABYSMAL, INEXCUSABLE’
Arthur Peacham, 68, had been retired for just two weeks when he was admitted to Stafford Hospital with back pain following a hernia operation.
After a week he was about to go home when staff told his wife, Gillian, that he had caught the C.difficile superbug.
After that, Mrs Peacham said, a series of ‘horrendous’ blunders helped lead to her husband’s death on March 19, 2006, including failing to give him food and leaving him on ‘filthy’ wards.
‘What happened to him was horrific,’ said Mrs Peacham, 69, seen right with a picture of her husband. ‘When they told me he had caught C. difficile they admitted they had known 11 other people on the ward were already infected but they had nowhere else to put him.
‘They told us it wasn’t contagious but my son checked on the internet and saw that it was highly contagious and could result in death.
‘My husband went downhill from there. He was having trouble keeping food down and they were supposed to give him a special drink but they didn’t feed him most of the time.
‘Either they would forget to get a prescription from the doctor or they were too short- staffed to care for him.
Mr Peacham, an agronomist who had two sons and four grandchildren, was eventually moved to New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton in early March.
His widow said: ‘There it was amazing. He was so clean and well looked after.
‘Unfortunately by then it was too late. The C.diff had ravaged his body.’
She added: ‘The care at Stafford Hospital was dreadful, abysmal, inexcusable.’
I sometimes wonder if the smaller hospitals have better care.
Correct. 80,000/year in the US from nosocomial infections.
saving
My thoughts exactly. More people to realize that government involvement in health care will be a disaster.
I am an ICU nurse.
I see the effects of goobermint intrusion into healthcare on a daily basis.
We ALREADY have MASSIVE government intervention into routine healthcare matters: so much so that in a normal 12 hour shift, fully HALF of the time is spent in government (medicare/medicaid) mandated paperpushing.
I work in an excellent small hospital; but it is already hard enough to help people when the government is always adding “just another tiny little piece of required documentation” to an existing heavy workload.
If the average citizen realized how inflated their medical bills were due to goobermint bureaucrat dictates, there would already have been a revolution.
Bureaucrats, moreso than crooked politicians, will be the death of this once-great Nation.
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