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East Lancashire hospitals dossier 'is flawed'
2:56pm Friday 16th May 2008
By Camilla Sutcliffe »
A DOSSIER of health "horror stories" is "riddled with inaccuracies", health bosses have said.
Liberal Democrat councillors in Burnley and Pendle have spent six months compiling a list of complaints from patients and staff about alleged failings at Royal Blackburn Hospital and Burnley General Hospital since the controversial move of emergency facilities and beds to Blackburn.
But a letter from Health Minister Ann Keen to Pendle MP, Gordon Prentice has revealed that 35 out of 42 allegations in a draft copy of the dossier handed to former chief executive Jo Cubbon were "unsubstantiated", and that half of the complaints had no relevance to the November shake-up.
Liberal Democrats said the document had been given in good faith to Mrs Cubbon, who left the trust in April, following calls from Pendle and Burnley councils for the sacking of the entire East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust board, which runs both hospitals.
The draft document made it clear that no claim made was complete, thorough, or well-researched.
Colne councillor and Liberal Democrat peer Tony Greaves, who led the compilation of the dossier, said the final, fully-researched document still had not been handed to East Lancashire Primary Care Trust, which has agreed to act as a broker between the councillors and hospital bosses.
Pendle MP Gordon Prentice, who publicised the comments from Mrs Keen, said the lack of a new document from the councillors meant that both MPs and hospital bosses had no other way to investigate their claims.
He said: "I'm lost for words. They have been saying it will be handed over any day for weeks, but nothing has been handed over, except this document.
"The whole thing has been hyped up over a period of months, but from what has been seen in the draft copy, it will be a damp squib."
He urged patients to go through hospital complaints procedures and speak to their MP if they had a grievance, and said campaigners should call on the health scrutiny committees of Lancashire County Council and Blackburn with Darwen Council, the only bodies able to call for a government-backed independent review.
Coun Greaves said: "We never said this was about Meeting Patients' Needs. It is about the present situation in East Lancashire. We have hundreds of stories of people who do not wish to have their names and addresses published but this is not about individual cases."
Gary Graham, acting chief executive of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust said: "Even though this document asserted that it may not be complete, we felt it was our duty to investigate. We found that many of the claims were unsubstantiated or were impossible to corroborate as the details were so vague.
"Once again I would urge anyone with a concern to approach the hospitals directly as we can offer guidance on the spot."
Your Say YourTelegraph
Darren Reynolds, Burnley says...
5:23pm Sun 18 May 08
The point is the increasing volume of patients who don't.
There are so many of these now that virtually everybody in Burnley and Pendle knows someone whose treatment has gone wrong. Let's be absolutely clear - the responsibility for this lies with the executive board of the Trust and the people above them who have failed to do anything about it.
What we are seeing with articles like this one is the sustained efforts of the board of directors, with their executive assistants and communications chiefs, plus the government, MPs and their press officers, all paid for with our taxes, attempting to bamboozle us into disbelieving our own eyes and ears.
Sadly our campaign is run by a fairly ramshackle bunch of volunteers with no public money other than council allowances of less than £300 a month, which has to cover an awful lot apart from protecting our hospital.
On the plus side, virtually everyone in Burnley and Pendle agrees with the campaign and disagrees with the Trust board and the area's sitting MPs. It's a much nicer feeling being on the side of ordinary folk, and we have every intention of carrying on.
bystander, lancs says...
9:47pm Sat 17 May 08
Pendlereader, Pendle says...
8:18pm Sat 17 May 08
"The whole thing has been hyped up over a period of months, but from what has been seen in the draft copy, it will be a damp squib".
Does the Pendle MP Gordon Prentice actually know what's happening in East Lancashire?
Only last week the media reported a disabled lady was sent home from Blackburn Hospital with a fractured skull. Did the hospital actually x-ray the poor woman?
Wake up Gordon Prentice, only last month the Telegraph reported Ambulances queueing outside Blackburn hospital for over THREE HOURS making casualties WAIT for treatment. Then there's the young boy who was sent home from hospital with glass in his knee (Yes Gordon, the hospital refused to x-ray the boy, they were too busy tryi9ng to meet your governments 4 hour target).
The only 'damp squid' is the one from Pendle sat blinkered in the commons bleating about save the whale.
whilst up here in the real world his Pendle constituents continue to suffer from his Labour governments pathetic reforms of the NHS.
And who is Anne Keen to say the patients accounts are 'unsubstantiated'?sh
e doesn't even live in East Lancashire!
Is it only me who reads the News? Or are the MP's trying to skirt around an issue they created, knowing that if they do nothing and pass the buck to some scrutiny committee, their heads may or may not roll.
we live in hope....
dave, burnley says...
7:04pm Sat 17 May 08
Tony Greaves wrote:Mr Prentice has a third choice, to jump on cue whenever his master, Gordon Brown tells him to. You can rely on Prentice, Usher and Straw to toe the party line whenever they are ordered (and stuff the people who voted for them!)
I should make it clear that this was a document given to Mrs Cubbon some months ago. The full dossier will be released very soon (hopefully this coming week).
There are new horror stories every week. We are not saying that they are all related to Meeting Petients Needs - they are all related to the present senior management of the EL Hospital Trust.
Mr Prentice has to decide which side he is on - the side of the hospital bosses, or the side of his constituents. If he takes the hospital bosses' side he is not fit to be MP for Pendle and ought to resign now instead of waiting to be kicked out at the next General Election.
Tony Greaves
Tony Greaves, Pendle says...
2:59pm Sat 17 May 08
There are new horror stories every week. We are not saying that they are all related to Meeting Petients Needs - they are all related to the present senior management of the EL Hospital Trust.
Mr Prentice has to decide which side he is on - the side of the hospital bosses, or the side of his constituents. If he takes the hospital bosses' side he is not fit to be MP for Pendle and ought to resign now instead of waiting to be kicked out at the next General Election.
Tony Greaves
Kevin, Colne says...
7:12am Sat 17 May 08
That's still not a good figure.
Kevin, Colne says...
7:04am Sat 17 May 08
Turning now to the crux of the newspaper story. The arguments over the closure of A&E at Burnley have been well ventilated but as Dave has said we're just going to have to like it or lump it.
Thankfully there is something called the ballot box and we will have an opportunity to be heard properly, whether politicians or NHS managers like it or not.
This is one 'consultation' that no politician can ignore.
We are told that of the 42 allegations, 35 are 'unsubstantiated'.I assume this means that the allegation as presented is not supported by sufficient evidence. We are told also that half the allegations are not related to the re-configuration of services in November. This means, of course, that half of them are a direct consequence of the changes that were made.
I do not know when the document was presented to officials. Let's assume that the allegations cover a 5-month period (November 2007-March 2008). This means that justified or not allegations of dissatisfaction relating directly to the changes are running at the rate of around 1 a week.
That is a truly appalling figure when one considers that this relates to patients from the Pendle area only.
Of course we shall now be subject to the usual sophistory of government and the NHS machine which will express the figure against the total number of users at Balckburn regardless of their origin of destination.
Thus will the truth be obscured from view.
ged, NELSON says...
8:12pm Fri 16 May 08
dave, burnley says...
8:04pm Fri 16 May 08
"He urged patients to go through hospital complaints procedures and speak to their MP if they had a grievance"
In other words, accept it because it ain't going to change!
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ROW: The dossier handed in to health chiefs contained complaints about care at East Lancashire hospitals including Royal Blackburn
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Kevin, Colne says...
5:57pm Sun 18 May 08
In these circumstances they have to say to the electorate: "Look, I'm sorry and I hear what you say but the evidence is over-whelming that such and such a policy is the right thing to do".
Now, in closing A&E at Burnley against the wishes of local residents the evidence should be beyond all reasonable doubt. But the truth is there are few areas of public policy that enjoy such certitude. I understand that the position and evidence with regard to centralizing A&E provision is a matter of contenious debate, even among the medical profession.
I wish the campaign to return A&E to Burnley well and support it but the cost will have to be met from somewhere and the truth is the nation is bankrupt. Our trade deficit is running at levels one normally associates with a banana republic and the psbr (public sector borrowing requirement) is absolutely horrific.
Captain Darling's piggy-bank is empty and it was Calamity Brown that emptied it. More worringly no one quite knows how we're going to get out of this fix, at least not without a lot of pain.
One final point. It saddens me greatly that the MPs for the area are aplogists for NHS management. It's very clear to me that despite what they say they're not on our side.