Obama Health Care: Unsafe and Dangerous Part 1

Patients at risk from 'unsafe' NHS trusts


Owen Bowcott
The Guardian
Friday 3 July 2009


Patient safety has been put at risk through "disastrously unsafe care" in a handful of NHS trusts, and insufficient progress is being made in improving services, a critical parliamentary study warns today.

As many as one in 10 patients who enter hospital may suffer harm, the Commons health select committee reports, while annual payouts for NHS medical negligence have climbed to more than £630m.

[Remember, Obama will reduce the waste ... what he isn't counting on is the inevitable court costs and payouts for negligence overwhelming every savings and costs the entire system more. naive, foolish and stupid - because we know what will happen if we follow this route and some idiots still want to go down this road.]

Health service managers have become obsessed by government-imposed performance targets, the MPs note, resulting in major lapses where "safety was pushed aside … by other priorities – particularly waiting time targets, the need to achieve financial balance and the achievement of foundation status".

This "undoubtedly … has been a contributory factor in making services unsafe", the Patient Safety report maintains. The three "notorious" examples it cites are Mid Staffordshire NHS trust, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust in Kent, and Stoke Mandeville hospital.

Ninety people died as a result of two Clostridium difficile outbreaks at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells during 2006 and 2007. A further 33 patients died of C difficile acquired within Stoke Mandeville hospital in 2003 and 2005. The outbreaks grew, it later emerged, when patients were moved from accident and emergency into ordinary wards – spreading the infection – in order to meet a four-hour A&E target.

[Got to meet quotas to save money to serve patients to handle the 300 million in the program!]

At Mid Staffordshire, between 400 and 1,200 extra deaths occurred over a three-year period owing to frontline services being reduced to cut back on the trust's debt levels — a precondition to it achieving foundation trust status.

The Commons' study expresses alarm that none of these scandals was picked up. The Healthcare Commission's annual health check and Monitor, the statutory body that authorises trusts to become foundation trusts, are criticised.

"Not only did Monitor fail to detect unsafe care, it effectively allowed the trust to compromise patient safety in premature pursuit of foundation status," says the committee.

The "significant under-reporting" of incidents was due in part to "the persistent failure to eliminate the blame culture". Staff, the MPs say, should be encouraged to report concerns or incidents without fear. They propose a complaints system such as the one in New Zealand, where staff are encouraged to raise concerns, and the creation of a body similar to the Department of Transport's Air Accident Investigation Branch to improve checks.

Patients who have suffered are currently forced to endure "lengthy and distressing litigation to obtain justice and compensation", the report says, while NHS organisations are "encouraged to be defensive", and spend large sums on legal costs.

The committee says it is "appalling" that the Department of Health has not implemented the NHS redress scheme, which aims to resolve complaints quickly and consistently without the need for court action, despite the necessary legislation being passed three years ago.

The figure that 10% of patients may be harmed by the NHS derives from written and oral evidence given to the select committee by Richard Thomson, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Newcastle. The original figures which he quoted came from a number of published sources, including an original study published in 2001 by Professor Charles Vincent and colleagues in Britain, and a review of such studies by EN de Vries and colleagues in the Netherlands published in 2008.

• This article was amended on Tuesday 7 July 2009. We originally said that the 10% figure for patients who may be harmed by the NHS came from a study by Richard Thomson. This has been corrected.




The entire article should be of interest. However, details are also important. What the British now accept as fact, our liberals pretend will not happen. This is only the beginning of what awaits us if we go down this failed and deadly road.

ANYONE who has the money comes to the US for medical treatment. Anyone.

Now - before you jump about saying - see, it is money and what about the poor. here is the false start on that issue: Americans buy insurance and can go to the doctor without making huge payments. FOREIGNERS cannot buy our insurance, and so if they come here MUST pay it all in cash, hence the need for MONEY.











Obama health care 1