A DAMNING report from the Care Quality Commission into the running of a private hospital has finally emerged in public some four months after the inspection took place.
Last January the CQC, following complaints, investigated Mount Alvernia hospital in Surrey, a private hospital run by one of the country’s biggest private healthcare companies, BMI Healthcare.
The assessment of the much delayed report is brutal, stating categorically that patients’ lives had been put at risk in the 76-bed hospital.
‘The care and treatment provided to patients at BMI Mount Alvernia hospital was unsafe. People were put at significant risk of harm to a life-threatening level. Children admitted for surgery were particularly at risk of unsafe and inappropriate care and treatment’.
The risk to children and other patients was as a direct result of ‘unsafe’ surgery being carried out in rooms that lacked the proper ventilation systems for the proper disposal of gases used in anaesthesia.
The report says this ‘posed a danger of infection to patients undergoing anything but very minor surgery’.
In addition, the investigation discovered that an NHS patient transferred to Mount Alvernia did not have his case reviewed on admittance and no attempt was made to communicate with his NHS consultant.
When his condition deteriorated, the order ‘do not resuscitate’ was given without any consultation with relatives.
The central question that arises from this case is: why did it take four months for such a damning report to see the light of day?
Even now the full report has not been published because, according to CQC: ‘Following last-minute representations from the provider, we have agreed to give due consideration to two issues they raise before the report is published.’
BMI Healthcare has now voluntarily agreed to suspend children’s surgery at the hospital.
The other question that springs to mind is where is the outcry from the health minister Jeremy Hunt?
Where is the condemnation of the brutal treatment handed out to patients at the hands of uncaring doctors and a hospital that obviously doesn’t care one iota about patient safety and is willing to put children’s lives at risk through unsafe practices?
After all, compare the delicate handling of this medical scandal with the treatment handed out by Hunt and the Tory-led coalition to the children’s heart surgery unit at Leeds General Infirmary last month.
At Leeds, on the basis of false statistics, the government and its NHS ‘Tsars’ declared the unit unsafe and closed it down immediately – no hanging around for four months and the opportunity for ‘due consideration’ to be given to objections.
This forced closure took place the day after a huge local protest had forced a judicial review of the government’s decision to close the Leeds hospital. If there had not been a second storm of protest, the review would have been by-passed and the government’s aim of closure achieved.
Similarly in the case of Mid Staffordshire NHS, where even the government’s own report concluded that lives were lost because of the drive to cut NHS costs and achieve Foundation Trust status. Hunt ignored these conclusions, and instead heaped abuse instead on the overworked doctors and nurses.
There has been no official government condemnation of the deadly treatment at the private BMI Healthcare, who most certainly do not have the excuse of having massive cuts to staff and services to explain this scandal.
On the contrary, BMI Healthcare is rolling in money from the privatisation of NHS services – in 2011 they earned over £200 million from the NHS, money taken from the NHS to provide huge profits for the company and its shareholders. Its shareholders are happy and the government is happy, but its patients are in danger!
The only way to stop this obscene boosting of private healthcare at the expense of the NHS is to put an end to NHS privatisation once and for all, by getting rid of the Cameron coalition and the capitalist system that puts profit before people’s needs every time.
