Last week a report by the Healthcare Commission conlcuded that a "litany of errors" were responsible for the "avoidable deaths" of more than 215 patients, plus a further 1,100 Clostridium Difficile infections, in only 3 NHS hospitals between April 2004 and December 2006.
The Chief Executive of the Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells Trust, Rose Gibb, resigned a week later pocketing a £250,000 payoff. James Lee, the Chairman of the trust, resigned this week, blaming government targets and poor nursing for the deaths. The value of his payoff is, as yet, unpublicised.
The report found dirt and neglect on understaffed wards, where bedpans were left unwashed, staff were "too busy" to wash their hands and concerned patients were told to "go to their beds". Much of the press has taken the opportunity to throw blame at the nursing staff but the Commission's report clearly cites that "the trust's financial difficulties and its obsession with meeting government targets distracted it from tackling the medical priorities and, specifically, the outbreak of C.difficile".
What an abject failure of this nation that an 87-year-old Dunkirik veteran, Joseph Nixon, died in a Maidstone hospital having been admitted for a routine bowel operation. He was left lying in his soiled sheets for hours at a time, causing him to become infected and die from C.difficile ... a man that had fought for his country, risked his life on countless occasions and seen his friends slaughtered in the World's most brutul conflict, killed by 21st century Britain's inability to care for its popoulation in the most basic way.
Now, don't be fooled by the current government's historical finger-pointing, this problem is purely that of "new" Labour's making. These horrendous failings identified by the Healthcare Commission are recent. They all seem to start around 2003, a full 6 years after "new" Labour took power. This government is responsible for the obsession with "business-model" targets being imposed in the NHS. HIT YOUR TARGET OR ELSE. That's "new" Labour.
Assess this: in 1989 (the height of Thatcherite Conservatism) there were 510 Senior Managers running the NHS; today there are more than 40,000. However, I don't see this as a failure of "trying to make the NHS run like business". No business would, or could, tolerate a management overhead such as this. It is a complete and abject failure of the NHS management structure and personnel over the last 10 years that is the problem and at the top of that management chain is the Health Secretary. These problems should and could have been prevented if this government had bothered to perform its duties. Labour see the NHS as their golden goose, harping back to its invention, so just ignore it. The damage inflicted in the last decade is truly immeasurable and will haunt the nation for many years to come.
These problems are clearly the result of political motivation, or lack of it, not that of business or economics. The architect of our current social devolution: not Blair, but Gordon "is a moron" Brown. Vote for him at your peril, and that of your children!
Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!
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