Mid Staffs NHS trust admits ‘very significant’ breaches over patient deaths
No doubt some will see this as vindication of the claim that this health trust was responsible for hundreds of deaths. It isn’t.
Fellow blogger Steve Walker investigated the claims very carefully and reported that, rather than causing a huge number of fatalities, the trust could be blamed for “one excess death, if that“.
I await claims that this result shows the real death toll was “a shocking four times as high” – or some such hysteria. It’s not the 400-1,200 we were led to expect, though.
Make no mistake – it is a tragedy that four deaths happened when they could have been prevented.
But let’s not blow this out of proportion, please.
The NHS trust that ran Stafford hospital has pleaded guilty to “very significant” health and safety breaches connected to the deaths of four elderly patients in its care.
Stafford magistrates court heard that three of the deaths occurred after falls, while another patient died after being given penicillin, despite hospital staff being told she was allergic to the antibiotic.
Mid Staffordshire NHS foundation trust, which no longer operates medical services, pleaded guilty to four offences through its solicitor and will be sentenced at Stafford crown court.
The Mid Staffordshire trust, which was replaced by new governance structures in November last year, was at the centre of an independent investigation and a public inquiry into “appalling” levels of care between 2005 and 2009.
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Source: Mid Staffs NHS trust admits ‘very significant’ breaches over patient deaths | Society | The Guardian
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Thanks for sharing an interesting overview of the Mid Staff crisis death stats. What was probably seen by the majority of the public as a guilty as charged mass death situation has been given another interesting different view. We are reminded we have to challenge all media information. Once again we are hearing about lazy or compliant journalists possibly spoon fed misinformation and their newspaper bosses who religiously just churn out unresearched sensational propoganda for political points and circulation figures. This piece of work at least digs far deeper into the background of the death stats nformation and unveils potential dark political agendas at work, conflicts of interest and using unchecked or unresearched data for the want of a headline rather than achieving the facts. Totally clear the staff were being overworked with poor staffing levels but the report challenges did this situation kill the numbers being reported. What is worse is how this body count situation could have been allowed to happen and made front page news without ever being openly challenged by anyone in the vast NHS networks and the Mid Staff hospitals. Even a hospital morgue attendant could have worked out if there was a major body count increase in his area. Reason there was no body count challenge maybe total fear and knowledge that whistleblowers will be exterminated. If this report is only half way true it is saddening that the population of this country is being fed propoganda by an elite power that uses its dark arts to rule press and TV power/information to achieve its own ends and agendas……nothing new there then…
An excellent analysis, I just refer to it as cut and paste journalism, someone claims something and the others copy without any investigative journalism whatsoever. Cameron repeated the proven lie that people were drinking from flower vases, although it has been proven beyond any doubt that there were not any flower vases in the hospital at the time of the alleged single incident having been removed for infection control reasons years prior to the incident. His reply, or that of a lacky, was that it is in the public domain so it must be true.
This is all part of the blame the NHS game to prepare it for full scale privatisation.
The residual part of mid staffs was left there to plead guilty to end the saga as soon as possible, it is also the idea that by pleading guilty the real reasons for the failings will not be highlighted which is the governments deliberate underfunding, and the management structure that was imposed by the government the whole of the trust system and the associated qango’s such as monitor ccg’s cqc’s etc. is failing and they don’t want to admit they got it wrong so we are stuck with a badly run health service costing far more in office staff than is necessary, and not enough front line staff to safely man the wards.