Most NHS trusts are endangering patients' lives by not implementing patient safety alerts

BBC News reports that the charity, AvMA, Action Against Medical Accidents, made Freedom of Information requests to NHS hospital trusts and found that 300 (75%) of them had not complied with at least one patient safety alert despite the deadline passing.

Radio 4's File on 4 programme this evening was an investigation into this matter and I listened to it. As a victim of many years of NHS blunders and knowing only too well the futility of expecting any lessons to be learned or remedial action taken, the horrors related in the programme held no surprise or shock for me. But if you are unfamiliar with the routine lack of importance accorded patient safety in NHS hospitals (compounded as they are by the uselessness of the Complaints Procedures) then I suggest you listen to the programme when it is repeated on Sunday, 21 February, at 1700 GMT. Or you can listen via the BBC iPlayer or download the podcast.

Heather Brooke presented an excellent report about MPs and the Westminster Gravy Train on Channel 4's Dispatches programme this evening.

She had put a monumental amount of work into it and was clearly committed to the causes of freedom-of-information and exposing corruption in high places.

See The Westminster Gravy Train

More than 100,000 operations have been postponed by the NHS over the past year for non-clinical reasons.

NHS cancels more than 100,000 operations in a year
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The number of cancelled operations is almost twice as high as previously admitted by the Government with thousands of patients suffering from multiple cancellations.

Ministers have previously said that cancelling operations is "unacceptable" yet have failed to act to prevent hospitals from cancelling procedures, often just hours before surgery is due to take place.

The figures have been obtained by the Conservatives who used Freedom of Information laws to request the data from NHS trusts."

The major operation I had last year was twice postponed 'at the last minute' and so instead of having it a few days after going into hospital, it was actually done almost a fortnight afterwards. This caused me agonising pain, immense extra suffering and continuing disability, and the need for carers still even now. It meant extra weeks in hospital and hundreds of hours of traveling to and from the hospital and waiting and time spent with occupational therapists and physiotherapists. It meant intense, needless, agonising pain. - And even now, it appears, I may need to have another operation because my extreme pain went unheeded and uninvestigated for almost a year after returning home after my hospital stay...)o: - Terrible, prolonged, unnecessary pain and suffering and disability; great, unnecessary additional financial cost...)o: - The NHS is a national disgrace.

NHS Hospitals earn £100m from car park fees

Hospitals earn £100m from car park fees

Extract from the Telegraph:

"Hospitals were accused of "fleecing" patients and their families after it was disclosed they made more than £100 million from car parking charges last year.

The figures, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, show hospitals across England and Wales earned £102.3 million last year, up from £97.2 million in 2006. Patients' groups said the parking charges, which can involve visitors paying more than £4 an hour, were a "scandal"."

Britain continues with mixed-sex wards despite widespread criticism

U-turn on mixed-sex hospital wards

Extract from the Telegraph

"Patients' charities have argued for years that mixed-sex wards are undignified, degrading and put women at risk of attack from male patients.

A number of female patients in recent years have been the victims of assault from men in mixed-sex wards.

Figures obtained by the Conservatives under Freedom of Information laws showed that nearly a third of hospitals are still treating men and women in the same wards.

This is almost double the amount stated in a report released in May by the Chief Nursing Officer.

Following inquiries by The Daily Telegraph, the Department of Health disclosed that eliminating mixed-sex wards is no longer an aim.

A DoH spokesman said: "We have to get away from this idea of single-sex wards. That is not what it is all about."

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Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

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Wider implications of the flawed theory that excess calorie intake causes obesity

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

Former NHS chief receives 'scandalous' pay-off

Former NHS chief receives 'scandalous' pay-off - Guardian

Extract:

"A pay-off of almost £500,000 to a former NHS chief executive has been uncovered today through a freedom of information request.

Health Service Journal obtained the information that Chris Town received a redundancy package worth £480,000 - four times his salary - following the reconfiguration of the Greater Peterborough primary care trust.

At the time, Mr Town was interim chief executive at the neighbouring Cambridgeshire trust but was offered redundancy after failing to secure that permanent job or one in Peterborough.

Mr Town said: "I got a small redundancy sum of around £20,000 to £25,000 and the rest is in my pension. I worked all of my life for the NHS and had a contract that said if I was made redundant for whatever reason over the age of 50, I would get benefits like being able to get my pension early."

'Twas ever thus: - The NHS exists for the benefit of its professional staff and for political reasons. Patients are not a priority.


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How to Lose weight!

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk.html

and http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ami.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free...(o:

Big rise in deaths, previously unreported, from superbug Clostridium difficile.

Big rise in deaths from 'superbug' - Telegraph

Extract:

"Fears about the real scale of the "superbug" threat in Britain's hospitals were raised yesterday after a report claimed that as many as 26,000 cases of Clostridium difficile had gone unreported in the last three years.

And no fewer than 176,450 people had contracted the bug - known as C. difficile - over that period, the research warned.

Grant Shapps, the Conservative MP who compiled the report, accused the Government of "dramatically underestimating" the extent of C. difficile by not counting anyone under 65 who contracted it.

Mr Shapps used Freedom of Information requests to every acute hospital trust in Britain to compile what he said was "the complete germ map of Britain".

According to his report, the three worst hospitals for C. difficile infections in 2006/07 were University Hospitals of Leicester, with 1,739 cases, North Bristol with 1,324 and Gloucestershire with 1,271."