Personal Injury Claims Bristol Blog

An NHS trust has been fined after it was discovered that basic errors caused the deaths of four patients. The trust that previously ran Stafford Hospital, Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, admitted four charges relating to the deaths of elderly people between 2005 and 2014.  Where the trust was originally fined £500,000 for the “blunders”, the Department of Health has agreed to cover the fine, and additional £35,000 in costs, seeing as the trust is now defunct and has no funds.

Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham has issued an apology to 90 year-old Margaret Slater after leaving her to lie on a trolley in the Accident and Emergency department on 11 November without food or water for 11 hours.  The dementia patient was taken to the hospital suffering from severe hallucinations and was seen by a nurse upon her arrival.  Three hours later she was seen by a doctor who said that she should be admitted to the hospital, however she was left where she was for a further eight hours before being moved to a ward.

A hospital trust has admitted to errors that resulted in the death of a newborn baby earlier this year. The baby girl died only two days after being born, with an investigation finding that she would have survived had her mother been given a caesarean section sooner. Delilah Hubbard died on 9 March in Leicester Royal Infirmary’s neonatal unit.

Following an investigation carried out by Care Quality Commission, which uncovered unacceptable practices and abuse of patients, Clitheroe’s Calderstones Hospital, the UK’s only specialist hospital for patients with learning disabilities, will close.  Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission heavily criticised the hospital in December upon completion of a widespread review carried out by them.

A hospital in Redhill has been criticised over delays in the diagnosis of a patient’s breast cancer following a government watchdog investigation. The patient, who remains anonymous, was referred to East Surrey Hospital after finding a lump in her breast. The ombudsman claimed that the hospital carried out both a mammogram and an ultrasound after her referral in the early summer of 2013, but neither tests confirmed breast cancer. After failing to carry out a needle biopsy, her cancer took a total of eight weeks to be diagnosed.