Hospital trust fined for lack of openness

A HOSPITAL trust yesterday became the first in the UK to be prosecuted for failing to be ‘transparent’ about a death.

University Hospitals Plymouth Trust did not act ‘with candour or openness’ towards an elderly patient’s family.

Elsie Woodfield, 91, died at Plymouth’s Derriford Hospital after going in for an endoscopy. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said the trust failed to tell her family that the death may have been caused by a mistake during the operation.

Her daughter, Anna Davidson, received a letter apologising some time later, but she felt it lacked ‘remorse’, Plymouth Magistrates’ Court heard.

Yesterday the trust gave a new apology after admitting it breached its duty of candour under the Health and Social Care Act. The duty was imposed in 2015 after hundreds of patients were abused and neglected in the Mid Staffordshire Hospital scandal.

The CQC has issued fines and warnings for similar breaches in the past but this was the first time it had taken a trust to court.

The court was told that Mrs Woodfield’s endoscopy was abandoned after five minutes when she suffered a perforated oesophagus. She collapsed and died on a hospital ward.

Her family were never told exactly what had happened as an internal incident report deemed it not to be a serious incident.

District Judge Joanna Matson ordered the trust to pay all the legal costs in the case – £10,845 on top of a £1,600 fine and £120 victim surcharge.