STANDARDS of care at a Notts hospital which was one of the worst in England for having high death rates have been laid bare in a report published today.
Prime Minister David Cameron launched a review into 14 hospital trusts with the highest death rates in the wake of the public inquiry into the Stafford Hospital scandal – which led to 1,200 patients dying in two hospitals run by Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation NHS Trust between 2005 and 2009.
In Notts, Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - which runs both King's Mill Hospital in Sutton-in-Ashfield and Newark Hospital - has been investigated.
All the trusts being investigated in today's report had higher-than-expected death rates from 2010-11 to 2011-12 and Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust has been placed in special measures.
The Keogh report found a number of areas of concern including:
+ A significant backlog of complaints which had not been dealt with - dating back to 2010.
+ Significant backlog in discharge letters and clinic appointments, and backlogs in reading scans and x-rays.
+ Significant concerns around staffing levels at both King's Mill Hospital and Newark Hospital and around the nursing skill mix - with trained to untrained nurse ratios considered low, at 50:50 on the general wards.
+ Concerns about the effectiveness of the governance at Newark Hospital - which "does not have adequate facilities" to perform operations which have the "potential for serious complications" because there is no blood bank at the hospital.
Paul O'Connor, Chief Executive said: "We were pleased that the national review team confirmed that there was no evidence of patient harm at our hospitals.
"However, we strive to provide good quality services to the many thousands of patients who use our hospitals each and every day, and that is why we will be responding to all of the recommendations contained in the report.
"We already had some actions in progress at the time of the review visit and we will now be taking whatever further actions are necessary to enable us to continue to improve our services."
In October last year the Post reported how at King's Mill dozens of women with breast cancer were given the wrong treatment after receiving incorrect test results.
And three women were likely to die earlier because of the error. In total 120 tests carried out at King's Mill Hospital, Sutton-in-Ashfield, and Newark Hospital between 2004 to 2010 gave a negative result for this test, when it should have been positive.
As a result, about 60 women were not given the best available treatment.
Government watchdog Monitor, which was called to investigate the trust in October last year, after the trust had struggled to keep on top of its finances.
The trust lost £5.9 million in the first quarter of the last financial year. But its cash problems can be traced back to the signing of a £302 million PFI deal to build a new hospital in November 2005.
The trust is committed to paying around £46 million in PFI charges in 2012-13, and the contract will not end until 2043.
