NHS Stafford Hospital Report.

I might be accused of being a dog with a bone on this matter but I don't care. My local hospital is on the hit list for failure of care.

Cash strapped NHS?

Today it's reported that in 2009 a former hospital Chief Executive warned 'SIR' David Nicholson of patient neglect in United Lincolnshire Hospital because of the 'Target Driven Culture' being imposed on managers. He was sacked from his job and took £500.000 silence money. Yes, £500.000. How many nurses would that alone pay for!

He said he felt emboldened to speak out after last weeks demand from Rober Francis that NHS whistlebloweres should be protected.

POGS, its a bone that needs chewing over!
Yes I saw this story - any 'business' that needs gagging orders to operate should be treated with suspicion. Its a 'National' health service funded by our taxes and should be completly open to scrutiny.

Whistlebowers should be protected - I call £500k a pretty good bit of protection! But better that people should be able to blow the whistle and stay in their jobs.

I have been in a situation where someone from the NHS did a bad job - they all clsed ranks and my complaint was a complete waste of time - you can't fight lying.

Mishap, no you can't. I can remember the frustration of looking someone straight in the eye as they told me a bold lie. It was the first time I come up against it in an employment issue and I just could not beleive that one adult could look another in the face and not flinch as they said something completely untrue over and over again.

Hilda W

How right you are.

Thank you BBC's This Week for mentioning this utter disgraceful 'cover up' by the NHS bureacracy.

I am so pleased Jeremy Hunt has taken the case of Mr Walker, the sacked Chief Executive I spoke of in a post before, to heart.

He has written to all NHS Executives re the case, instructing them not to follow suit with payments of 'silence' money to sacked whistle blowers. Hopefully whistle blowers will now be heard not paid off.

Now he has set up an inquiry, might David Nicholson finally be booted out?

Hunt will now find there has been a massive problem of cover ups heading for his in-tray. This will not be easy to deal with as it has been going on for years. This problem really has been from the top down.

The National Health Service was set up after the war to care for the sick and save lives. It seems that in some areas it is now neglecting and in some cases killing the very patients it should be caring for. To add to this insult it has covered up these deaths by insisting on gagging clauses. Not a single individual has so far been sacked or made to answer for any of this. You couldn't make it up could you?

What happens if you are unfortunate enough to have a relative that is being so badly neglected and you kick up a huge fuss? Has anyone been succesful in getting the matter resolved?

There is now an e-petition calling for Sir David Nicholson's resignation
https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/45576

Now that 'Sir' David Nicholson has won, and is keeping his job, what can we do to oust him? I feel so helpless and ineffectual now, having voted for his sacking on the e-petition. What do the public have to do to be heard? There are so many people up in arms- won't anybody listen? After all, we are all paying towards his gigantic salary.

If anybody is interested in seeing matters as they arise. David Nicholson is 'at this moment' giving evidence to the Select Committee, Freeview 81

I think he is probably having a harder time with the MP's, rather than with Francis. I am not impressed with him.

I watched some of that POGS and was left wondering who appointed such an ineffectual twerp and with a sense of disappointment that they weren't harder on him.

kitty

I was quite cross at the end of it too. I felt they should have been harder on him. A few had a good go.

I have concluded the present government have backed him as they want him to oversee the new NHS structure, perhaps they will want a fall guy. Labours Andy Burnham and the Shadow Health Minister have backed him because they know it takes the heat off them as they were in charge during the period of 2005 -2009 and the fact it was the target driven culture created by them that takes a high level of the blame in the Francis Report.

I felt sorry for Julie Bailey who has relentlessly campaigned for the Stafford Enquiry. She was sat behind Nicholson in todays select committee. I don't know how she kept her mouth shut.

It took seven years for my daughter's claim for medical negligence to be settled - the Medical Defence Union, the surgeon's insurers, dragged it out and the delay contributed in a major way to her mental, physical and financial problems.
The surgeon concerned was suspended after there were 75 separate complaints about his competence but in my view he should have been prosecuted for assault or reckless endangerment. He must have known that his own failing health was causing him to make gross mistakes. He was close to retirement anyway and no doubt was just topping up his large pension pot by doing private cosmetic surgery (for which he had no specialist training).
What infuriates me even more than the fact that he is still living in his million pound farmhouse is that none of the team of junior doctors,, aneasthetists and nurses had the courage to blow the whistle, , while the lives of more than a dozen women were destroyed. He cost the NHS millions in damages as many of his victims were patients in the awful East Kent Hospital at Canterbury.
I thought that a surgeon's success/failure rate was monitored - if so, why was this butcher not stopped sooner?

A shocking report and some awful stories here as well. I can't believe that Nicholson doesn't feel it appropriate to resign. And if I hear that phrase "lessons to be learned" one more time I'll scream.

Speaking personally and for other family members, I count my blessings that we have been fortunate in receiving, at worst, reasonable care whenever we've needed it, but in the cases reported, where things have gone very wrong, somebody should be held accountable.

My own feeling is that the determination of this government to privatise more and more services will only add to the problem because services will be run for the profit of shareholders. To maximise profits, staffing and general costs will be cut and there will be even less money available for patient care.

It's nearly enough to make want to vote UKIP!

I mean, what else can we do? There 's so much conspiracy and power among the top money grabbing self centred immoral nasty persons.

Eloethan

I fully understand the fear of privatisation but it can have some merits.

Even the Guardian has a report concerning Hinchingbrooke Hospital which was taken over by the private company Circle. Hinchingbrooke had a dire reputation and was £40 million pounds in debt, mainly due to PFI.

Medical Director Hisham Abdel-Rahmen admits he went on marches to stop Circle taking control. Now he says "We have been going in the right direction. The best thing is there's been no mention of private patients" Hinchingbrooke now has a better than ever level of patient satisfaction!!

As I have mentioned my local hospital George Elliot, Nuneaton has been one of the hospitals named as being one of the worst in England for death rates. I will go no further if people don't mind. It has been reported in our local paper George Elliot is looking at the possibility of Circle taking control, early days though I beleive.

Am I so sure this is the right thing to do, no. Am I sure the NHS as it is/was is the right thing, no, giving my experience. Time will tell.

On the other hand, some privately run prisons have a very bad track record.
My own feeling is that private profit should not enter into either the prison system or the health service, but I realise that bird has flown long ago.
I am afraid it is naive to think that all commercial organisations are efficient - I am thinking of G4 and Capita and some of the others that get huge, profitable government contracts and fail to deliver the goods.

And private out-of-hours GP services have had their share of problems - the latest was the 7 week old baby who died

And medical locum agencies

The trouble with hospital management is that managers seem to be like a pack of cards. They make a balls up of "their"hospital and they take a golden handshake and next thing we hear they are on the opposite side of the country with a really nice retirement package ON TOP of the previous job. They just shuffle each other around and keep aclosed shop.Nothing is secret in the NHS but people's livelihoods are threatened if they try to spill the beans. I have several close friends who worked in the NHS and some of the tales I was told made the blood run cold.

Stansgran

Agrred

jan thanks for link - not as many signatories as I would have expected.