Hundreds of deaths a year in British hospitals associated with poor health care

The Telegraph reports that the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) say that poor care contributed to at least some of the more than 3,000 deaths they analysed. "One in three patients who died within days of being admitted did not receive acceptable standards."

I urge you to read the report, which is described as "shocking".

Around 300,000 people die every year in British hospitals.

I believe that such neglect should result in criminal prosecutions.

Letters Page of the Sunday Telegraph today

I hope you will go to the Telegraph link and read the shocking letter from Dr Peter N Hargreaves, a consultant in community palliative medicine in West Sussex. - Here are the first and last paragraphs:

"SIR – I applaud your campaign to right the disasters that are being inflicted daily on patients (report, March 29). I am a consultant in community palliative medicine and a great deal of my time is now taken up with trying to heal the psychological traumas that patients have endured while in hospital."

"An audit of my patients who received intravenous rehydration showed that 50 per cent of them went home. Refusal to rehydrate leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy of death. I am convinced large numbers of patients are having their lives shortened either by neglect or by express denial of simple therapies. "