Stafford Hospital: Gordon Brown apologises to families of dead

Mar 18 2009 By Jonathan Walker

Gordon Brown has apologised to patients and the relatives of those who died, after a Staffordshire hospital was condemned for providing appalling standards of care.

But Ministers rejected demands for a public inquiry into failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

The Prime Minister made a public apology in the House of Commons and pledged that there would be individual inquiries into every death at the Trusts’s hospitals, if relatives asked for one.

Families would also have the right to see case notes for every patient that died, he said.

And the Prime Minister said he had personally read the damning report by the Healthcare Commission, which exposed “shocking” lapses in care and warned between 400 and 1,200 patients may have died unnecessarily.

Mr Brown said: “We do apologise to those people who have suffered.”

He told MPs: “What happened at that hospital was unacceptable and should never have been allowed to happen.”

Relatives would be given access to case notes and could ask for these to be reviewed if they wished, he said.

“There will be individual reviews if they seek it,” the Prime Minister said.

But the Prime Minister said that the Healthcare Commission had assured him there were no other hospitals or parts of the NHS which had displayed similar failings.

“I believe we should focus on the individual mistakes made at the hospital,” he said.

Mr Brown was challenged by MP Bill Cash (Con Stone) who said: “What we need is a full public inquiry to get to the bottom of this.”

But the Prime Minister said Professor Sir George Alberti, National Clinical Director for Urgent and Emergency Care, had been asked to lead an independent review of the trust’s current A & E services.

The Government has also asked a senior Department of Health official, David Colin-Thome, the National Clinical Director for Primary Care, to look into why the health trusts’s failings were not exposed earlier.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson ruled out a public inquiry, when he made his own statement to the Commons.

He said: “I really don’t think with the greatest respect that a public inquiry is going to take us any further forward.”

And he rejected claims from opposition MPs that the hospital’s failings were caused partly by the imposition of targets, which managers were desperate to meet.

Blaming targets would “let the management at Stafford off the hook,” Mr Johnson said.

He accepted an invitation from Stafford MP David Kidney (Lab) to come to Stafford to meet patients and their relatives.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said the Government must explain why the hospital was allowed to become a foundation trust when its care was so poor.

He said: “It beggars belief that this hospital was a three-star hospital and secured foundation trust status.”

The Healthcare commission launched an inquiry after concerns were raised about higher than normal death rates in emergency care, in particular at Stafford Hospital.

It found deficiencies at “virtually every stage”, including inadequately trained staff who were too few in number, junior doctors left alone in charge at night and dirty wards and bathrooms.

Some patients were left in pain or needing the toilet, sat in soiled bedding for several hours at a time and were not given their regular medication, the investigation found.

Receptionists with no medical training were also left to assess patients coming in to accident and emergency.