Health watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), have ordered Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital to submit weekly reports monitoring the heart unit for the “foreseeable future” following concerns raised about high death rates during or following heart procedures. The Commission confirmed that it would be publishing its results in the near future.
“a cluster of deaths”
The University Hospitals Birmingham Trust that runs the hospital revealed that concerns had been raised following “a cluster of deaths”, and that a surgeon had been dismissed when it was found that he had been misrepresenting the time spent on heart-lung bypass machines. The surgeon, Ian Wilson, had been subject to investigations for 12 months before his dismissal in 2013. The internal investigation revealed that Mr Wilson had lost 15 patients during a 14 month period. It was found that he had been understating the time spent on the bypass machines. Studies have found that the longer a patient spends on the machine, the more likely it is to result in complications or death.
Chief inspector of Hospitals at the CQC, Prof Sir Mike Richards, said that the Trust had been subject to inspection on 21 and 22 December 2015. During the inspection “significant concerns” were raised by auditors surrounding the “safety, effectiveness and responsiveness of the service”. The Trust was ordered to “take immediate action” to monitor “individual patient safety and outcome data on a weekly basis”.
An independent team of auditors from the Royal College of Surgeons has been formed to review procedures at the hospital and to develop a comprehensive programme of improvements necessary.
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