Liverpool Care Pathway - Forgetting To Dot The PFIs

This is Chronicle Live -

These are the killing wards. 

The widow of a college lecturer has demanded an inquest into his death. 

Patricia Heard’s husband George was admitted to Rake Lane Hospital, in North Tyneside, in June last year complaining of uncontrollable shaking and jerking. 

Despite efforts in intensive care, the 65-year-old, from Cramlington, Northumberland, died in July 2012 more than a month after he was diagnosed with a “severe infection”. 

In a four-page document submitted to Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Mrs Heard has now demanded answers and claimed her husband did not receive the treatment he required. 

Jim Mackey, the trust’s chief executive, replied saying his members of staff had carried out a “thorough investigation” but indicated the nurses had done everything in Mr Heard’s best interests. 

Since her husband’s death, Mrs Heard has written to a coroner to give her account of her husband’s treatment in hospital and is calling for a full investigation into his death. 

She has also contacted clinical negligence solicitors TLW Solicitors.

This is News & Star -

These are our hospitals. 

No details of how Mr Parke died have been released. 

His cousin, Ross Parke, said the family did want to say anything about the investigation. He was not prepared to say why Mr Parke was in the hospital. 

When an inquest was opened into Mr Parke’s death last year no cause of death was listed. 

News of the police probe comes after it was revealed last month that a national health team is expected to come to the West Cumberland and Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle to investigate their “higher-than-expected death rates”. 

Last year, North Cumbria Hospitals University NHS Trust had the second-highest mortality figures using the Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratio (HSMR). Now a ‘rapid review team’ is being brought in to support the trust – which runs the hospitals – in a bid to get the numbers down. 

The action, and similar intervention at 13 other trusts across the country, comes in the wake of the Mid Staffordshire health scandal where poor care led to 1,200 needless deaths. 

However, the north Cumbria trust started looking into death rates last year after the Dr Foster research group revealed it was one of 12 in the country with death rates higher than expected.

          First published at 16:58, Tuesday, 02 April 2013

          Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk

These Trusts do not deserve our trust.

BBC News Cumbria reported -

15 November 2011 Last updated at 16:56
Cumbria hospitals health boss hits back at safety claim

A health boss in Cumbria has branded claims that a cash crisis is putting patients' safety at risk as "nonsense".

In a recent leaked email, Neil Goodwin, chief executive of the North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust, said the financial situation was worsening.

It proposed measures including ward closures at Whitehaven and Carlisle hospitals to try to claw back £1.3m.

BBC News Cumbria reported -

27 November 2011 Last updated at 09:19
Cumbria hospital staff fears over patient safety

A cash crisis could be putting patient welfare at two hospitals in Cumbria at risk, according to some of the staff.

They say there is a shortage of beds and low morale at Carlisle's Cumberland Infirmary and the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven.

It was described as a "blame game".

"If the duty matron opens beds, especially over the weekend, they're hauled over the coals by business managers on Monday morning."

BBC News Cumbria reported -

18 January 2012 Last updated at 14:14
North Cumbria NHS trust 'squandered money'

Nurses, unions and other medical staff employed by a Cumbria NHS trust have said they have lost confidence in its ability to provide services.

A joint statement claims North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust has "squandered" money, including £466 to replace a light fitting.

The trust runs Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle and West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven.

£466 to replace a light fitting? This sounds like a PFI hit.

And, according to Visit Cumbria -

Hospitals in Cumbria

There are two firsts in the North West of Cumbria – the first NHS hospital, in Whitehaven, and the first PFI hospital, in Carlisle.

The West Cumberland Hospital, in Whitehaven, was the first hospital built in England following the creation of the National Health Service. It was officially opened on October 21, 1964 by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Currently (2012) there are plans to build a replacement hospital on the existing site.

The Cumberland Infirmary, in Carlisle, the flagship of the national PFI programme was officially opened by the Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, Prime Minister, on Friday 16th June 2000.

And, according to The Whitehaven News -

HOSPITAL PFI SCHEME IS CRIPPLING US, SAYS TRUST

Published at 11:09, Thursday, 29 September 2011

THE NHS trust which runs North Cumbria’s two main hospitals is among 22 which have warned the Government that they are being financially crippled by private finance schemes.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has been contacted by 22 NHS trusts which say their “clinical and financial stability” is at risk because of the spiralling cost of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts.

Cumberland Infirmary was the first major hospital in the country to be funded by a PFI initiative when it opened in April 2000.

The Infirmary cost £67m to build in 2000, and of its £200m annual turnover last year its PFI repayment came to £18m.

The repayments over 30 years are likely to run into hundreds of millions, annually eating up a large proportion of the trust’s budget.

North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust, which runs the Infirmary and Whitehaven’s West Cumberland Hospital, now faces having to cut £15m from its budget to balance the books in the current financial year.

The controversial PFI schemes – expanded by the previous Labour government – use private capital to fund public infrastructure projects such as hospitals.

BBC News Cumbria reported -

1 February 2012 Last updated at 10:24
Northumbria trust takes over two Cumbria hospitals
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is to take over the running of two hospitals in north Cumbria.

The move affects the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle and the West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven.

The Cumbria trust denied that patient safety was at risk.


The financial dire straits the NHS finds itself in must, in large part, be laid at the door of Labour's scatterbrained schemes.

In a time of economic peril, this is only exacerbated. It is the 'fair' economies of Communitarian healthcare to ration scarce medical resources which is being promoted as the solution.