The British Medical Association yesterday repeated concerns about government targets that ‘compromise patient safety’, in the wake of the resignation of United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust chairman David Bowles.
Bowles said he was unable to provide unequivocal assurances about hitting government targets without putting emergency patients at risk.
A spokesman for the BMA told News Line: ‘It is deeply worrying to hear that the lessons have not been learned from the fundamental failures in healthcare delivery reported at Mid Staffs.
‘When government targets distort clinical care to the extent where patient safety is compromised, then it is surely time to discard them.’
David Bowles quit on Tuesday after being threatened with suspension when he refused to commit United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust to meeting national waiting targets.
Bowles accused NHS bureaucrats of attempting to bully him into making promises that would have put the safety of patients in jeopardy.
He warned that strategic health authority bosses had failed to heed the lessons of the Stafford Hospital scandal, where hundreds of patients died in the wake of 160 job cuts to save £10m so hospital foundation targets could be met.
He told local Tory MP Mark Simmonds that Strategic Health Authority (SHA) bosses ordered him to guarantee that the trust would hit national waiting targets for non-urgent patients, even though its hospitals were treating record levels of emergency patients.
When he refused to make the commitment, warning that doing so would put the safety of patients at risk, he was threatened with suspension.
Angered by this, Bowles quit at once, describing the threat to suspend him on Tuesday as the ‘last act in a long line of bullying’.
He added that he was ‘forced out because I had the temerity to say no. It was as simple as that.’
Bowles wrote to Lincolnshire MP Simmonds: ‘I refuse to work in a system which seems not to have learned the lessons of Mid Staffordshire (foundation trust) and to have lost sight of the critical issues of patient safety.’
He accused Strategic Health Authority bosses of ‘a substitution of bullying for performance management and an obsession with targets rather than safety’.