Safe NHS Hospitals?
(For Latest Update See Bottom of Page)
Dr Peter Homa Chief Executive for the Commission For Health Improvement & Currently On Secondment As St George's Healthcare Acting Chief Executive
When patients come into Hospital they and their relatives assume that they are entering a safe environment in which they will be cared for. Sadly it would seem that the Government's continued drive for further financial savings and efficiencies has in many cases resulted in Hospitals not complying with essential health and safety legislation. The Panorama programme fiddling the figures featured a report from the Chief Engineer of St George's Healthcare NHS Trust which gave a long list of health and safety and fire legislation with which the Trust was either not complying or was only complying with in a limited way. At the both the St George's Healthcare NHS Trust Annual General Meeting held in September 2003 and at the October 2003 public board meeting Peter Homa was asked if given that the Chief Engineers report was now over a year old St George's was now compliant with all the Health & Safety & Fire Legislation that it has by law to comply with. Mr Homa replied that St George's was not currently compliant, but that a review would be undertaken to see what needed to be done to improve the situation. Perhaps more worryingly however, was that Mr Homa with all his experience as Chief Executive of the Commission for Health Improvement, stated that in his experience the position at St George's was typical of that which exists at least half of all NHS hospitals. If that isn't a worrying comment on today's NHS I don't know what would be.
The Wandsworth Borough News has been covering this story click here to find out what the Trust's own published accounts show is the current state of the Trust's plant and equipment.
The problems that the Trust are experiencing in ensuring that the Hospital maintains a safe environment are not academic. A power cut in the South London area experienced on the 28th August caused a failure in the arrangements for switching to stand-by generators and the Trust issued a Press Statement about this issue on the 8th December This kind of failure was entirely predictable when you consider the advice given by the Chief Engineer in June 2002. This serious incident has also been given press coverage in the Wandsworth Borough News and in the South London Press where it states quite clearly that patients lives were put at risk.
Further problems concerning safety at St George's Healthcare NHS Trust have recently arisen. The Wandsworth Borough News reported on the 9th January 2004, that the hospitals stand by electricity generators failed to work during the previous summers heat wave and that as a result both the Accident and Emergency department and the Intensive Treatment Unit were without power for a period. What is so sad about all of this is that as the information outlined on this page clearly demonstrates the problems of under investment in the infrastructure of St George's has been pointed out for some time and still the situation is not rectified.