NEWS
A
nother report has shown the lack of dignity and care
offered to elderly patients in NHS hospitals.
Soon after a Health Ombudsman’s report that highlighted scandalous individual cases of poor care, reported in the previous edition of NHE, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has now named some NHS trusts that fail to meet even basic
standards
after spot checks. Three out of the 12 assessed failed to meet the legally-necessary standards.
The inspection reports compiled by the CQC criticise the health service
for not respecting the
privacy of some elderly people receiving treatment or ensuring they eat properly.
The three trusts named were Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS trust, the Ipswich Hospital NHS trust and the Royal Free Hampstead NHS trust in north London. A further three trusts gave the CQC some concerns,
while the remaining six were performing satisfactorily or well.
The CQC said: “While the reports document many examples of people being treated with respect and given personalised, attentive
care, some tell a bleak story of people not being helped to eat and drink, with their care needs not assessed and their dignity not respected.”
At the Royal Free Hospital,
inspectors said staff did not always respond to patients pressing bells and rarely asked if they had enough to drink.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley and the NHS Confederation both called “unacceptable”.
the situation
Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said some of the instances were the fault of individual NHS staff and should be condemned, but others were the result of under-staffing and poor trust management.
Michelle Mitchell, who wrote about the poor standards of care for the elderly in NHS hospitals in the last edition of National Health Executive, said: “It is extremely worrying that a quarter of the first 12 hospitals to be spot-checked were non-compliant in both areas.”
The hospital trusts accepted the reports and have pledged to improve.
P
arliament’s spending watch- dog has heard that cancel-
ling the remainder of Computer Sciences Corporation’s (CSC’s) £3bn worth of contracts could prove higher than carrying on with them.
Christine Connelly, head of the NHS IT
programme, told the Commons Public Accounts
Committee that the “absolute maximum” to which the NHS “could be exposed” was more than is left to run on the consul- tancy’s deal to install electronic patient record systems. That fig- ure could be £1.6bn, according to the NAO.
Connelly’s admission prompt- ed one of the Public Accounts
Committee’s members, MP Richard Bacon, to say the CSC “has the NHS over a barrel”, while committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge added it
appeared the
company was “holding the tax- payer to ransom”.
Missed deadlines prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to imply the whole contract could be termi-
A Cabinet Office review will ex- amine the possibility of agreeing a cut-down contract, it is reported, by dropping systems for GPs and ambulance services, potentially saving £500m.
nated. The Department of Health considers that CSC has breached its contract, but the company does not accept that.
O
fficial statistics show that the number of alcohol-related
admissions in England has topped one million for the first time.
The NHS Information Centre statis- tics show an increase of 12% be- tween 2008/9 and 2009/10.
The number of admissions reached 1,057,000 in 2009/10 compared with 945,500 in 2008/9 and 510,800 in 2002/3. Almost
two-thirds of cases were men.
Tim Straughan, chief executive of the NHS Information Centre, said the report also highlighted the “in- creasing cost of alcohol depend- ency to the NHS as the number of prescription items dispensed con- tinues to rise”.
He added: “This report provides health professionals and policy makers with a useful picture of the health issues relating to alcohol
6 | national health executive May/Jun 11
use and misuse. It also highlights the importance of policy makers and health professionals in recog- nising and tackling alcohol misuse which in turn could lead to savings for the NHS.”
The Department of Health will pub- lish a new alcohol strategy later this year.
The full report is available at www.
ic.nhs.uk/pubs/alcohol11
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