Basildon hospital report prompts reform call
Updated on 27 November 2009
After a Care Quality Commission report detailing hygiene failings and an unusually high death rate at two Essex hospitals, the Patients Association calls for trust management to be reformed.
Director of the charity Katherine Murphy called for board members of Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to step down after the damning report found poor hygiene and standards of care.
Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found used equipment, blood stains on floors and curtains and badly soiled mattresses at the A&E department of the flagship hospitals.
Equipment was being used repeatedly that should only be used once and resuscitation room equipment was past its use-by date.
Other items found at the trust included blood pressure cuffs stained with blood, contaminated suction machines and evidence of mould.
Yet in the same month as the CQC issued the trust with a warning over poor standards, it also gave it a glowing review.
Basildon and Thurrock was rated as "good" on quality of service in the CQC's 2008/09 assessment and marked "excellent" for its financial management.
The CQC gave the trust 13 out of 14 for cleanliness, seven out of eight for standards of care and five out of five for keeping the public healthy.
Ms Murphy said the hygiene problems and failure to provide basic care echoes other similar reports on other hospitals.
"How many times do the public need to keep hearing about this before the government is embarrassed enough to do something about it?," she said.
The CQC has noted the trust's death rate in 2008 for all emergency admissions was 6.1 per cent above the national average of 4.4 per cent.
The trust's own analysis also showed that between 18 and 20 patients per 1,000 had evidence of pressure sores, compared with a national average of 11 per 1,000 people.
The trust - which runs Basildon University Hospital and Orsett hospital - has foundation trust status, which is a supposed marker of excellence.
