From the Telegraph:
By Andrew Gilligan.
The whole thing.
Dr Hubley’s is just the most serious in a growing list of cases which raise serious concerns about the safety of 'independent sector treatment centres', writes Andrew Gilligan.
Dr John Hubley's operation to remove a gall bladder was supposed to take an hour, and he was expecting to be home the same evening. Instead, in a "torrent" of blood, he was dead.
What killed him was not the operation, one of the simplest there is. Neither the pathologist at the inquest, nor one of the country's most eminent experts in the field, had ever heard of it being fatal. No, what killed Dr Hubley was a Government initiative.
If Dr Hubley had been treated at a proper hospital, heard the inquest, he would have lived. Instead, he was sent to one of New Labour's "independent sector treatment centres" – clinics run by private companies, but taking only NHS patients and wholly funded by the state.
To ministers, ever questing for the quick fix, ever faithful when it came to privatisation's magic healing powers, the ISTCs were a godsend. Ben Bradshaw, then a junior health minister, said they were "providing NHS patients with fast access to high-quality treatment and galvanising the NHS to raise its game". There are now around 40, cutting waiting lists around the country. But many ISTCs are also cutting corners.
Dr Hubley, for example, had a haemorrhage on the operating table – but the clinic, although it carried out dozens of operations a week, did not have enough swabs to stem the bleeding.
Incredibly, it didn't even hold any emergency blood stocks to replace the blood Dr Hubley had lost.
The surgeons wanted to ring the local NHS hospital and ask for blood, but there wasn't a phone in the operating theatre. Someone had to go outside and rummage around for his mobile. The blood took almost two hours to arrive in sufficient quantity. By that time, it was much too late.
Dr Hubley's is just the most serious in a growing list of cases which raise serious concerns about the safety of these clinics. So far, these have mostly been local stories. It's time to start joining them up.
On Wednesday, this newspaper reported that ISTCs operated by a company called Clinicenta across North London had been closed by the NHS "in the interests of patient safety" after "a number of incidents" understood to include up to two deaths.
This particular contract has only been going for six months, and has served just a handful of patients. Two deaths already, if that is the case, would seem poor odds. Clinicenta is part of Carillion, a construction company. What do builders know about surgery?
Earlier this year, a survey for the BBC in the West Country found that almost a third of leading trauma and orthopaedic surgeons believed their local ISTC did not operate safely. Four surgeons reported avoidable patient deaths. Twelve reported avoidable poor outcomes, with one saying: "The results are very poor and I have to redo the operations, with unhappy results."
Dr Mark Porter, of the BMA consultants' committee, tells me: "We have been extremely concerned about where ISTCs get their staff from. They sometimes use short-term staff from abroad, whose quality control is questionable compared to an NHS consultant." And the public is paying through the nose for it all. Earlier this year, Edinburgh University found that, under fixed-cost contracts, the ISTCs had been paid £1 billion for operations that never took place.
You may think private is better. If it's the London Clinic, it probably is. But these are new outfits, specifically set up to make money from the taxpayer. If someone tries to send you to one, just say no, because NHS patients are finding themselves transferred into a semi-private netherworld without the same checks and safeguards.
The coroner condemned the ISTC where Dr Hubley died as a "Mickey Mouse" operation. The clinic responded: "We met all the criteria and all the regulations. [Blood] was not a requirement."
Blood was not a requirement. Let that be the epitaph for this literally fatal wheeze.
No comment from me needed.
Angus
Angus Dei on all and sundry
AnglishLit
Angus Dei politico
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