Wednesday, 27 November 2013

Wexham Park Hospital - the feud goes on.


Here’s an update on the feud at Wexham Park Hospital, Slough. I have to say, as a daily visitor, that none of this is spilling out onto the wards.

And at least there is some whistleblowing going on there;

26 Nov 2013

Slough Observer

THE chief executive of a crisis-hit hospital is reassuring doctors and patients they 'should have no fear’ using its services after alleged blunders and feuds were exposed.

 

THE chief executive of a crisis-hit hospital is reassuring doctors and patients they 'should have no fear’ using its services after alleged blunders and feuds were exposed.

Philippa Slinger, chief executive of the Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is reported to have said she fears there will be a boycott by local GPs frightened to refer patients to the Slough hospital, in an email leaked to a national newspaper.

 

It follows claims last week a 'race row’ had erupted at Wexham Park Hospital after a letter from top consultants to health watchdogs, Monitor and the Care Quality Commission, outlining 'a number of issues’ was also leaked. The letter is reported to claim that patients’ lives are being lost because errors made by white doctors are being covered up, while those made by ethnic minority doctors are highlighted.

 

The letter was sent only weeks after a probe, by medical investigations firm InPractice, into a 14-year feud between doctors at the trust uncovered 48 cases of possible harm to patients went unchecked.

Speaking to The Midweek, Ms Slinger said: “I think the way the story has been covered in the Mail on Sunday could lead to patients feeling more fearful than they need to about the care our surgeons provide.

 

“The difficulty is that if we have selective press coverage that perhaps doesn’t give the balanced view that the InPractice report gave, the danger is that people start to worry more than they need to and GPs get more worried than they need to.”

She added: “We would like to say that we have no concerns about the surgeons in that report. The reality is that if you look at the health outcomes we do incredibly well and we have good mortality rates and medical treatment has proven to be very good. The matters discussed were many years ago that needed to be completed and finished off. People should have no fears in using our doctors and our consultants.”

Last week, a Monitor spokesman told The Midweek’s sister publication The Observer, it is the 'process of investigating the issues raised’ in the letter.

The trust has been in huge debt, totalling around £13.5m last year. A damning CQC report on Wexham Park Hospital, published in July, found the hospital was 'failing to protect the welfare of patients’.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

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