107 PATIENTS DIE AFTER CATCHING COVID IN HOSPITAL
UHNM ‘first in country’ to publish figures
MORE than 100 patients have died after catching Covid-19 at Staffordshire’s main hospital trust.
University Hospitals of North Midlands has seen 107 ‘healthcare acquired’ Covid-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic - with threequarters of these occuring between November and January.
The numbers are now falling, with 25 deaths recorded in January, down from 30 in December, as the latest wave of infections has waned.
UHNM, which runs the Royal Stoke and County Hospital, has now set up a review panel to look into these deaths, which will assess the quality of care provided and the infection prevention measures put in place.
It is understood that UHNM is the first hospital trust in the country to publish these figures.
It started publishing figures for all cases of healthcare-acquired covid last month.
Chief nurse Michelle Rhodes told a meeting of the trust board that she believed it was important to be as transparent as possible on the subject of nosocomial infections and deaths.
She said: “All of those deaths will be investigated, and we will learn from them, because that’s the only thing we can do to take this forward.”
To put the number of nosocomial covid deaths at UHNM in context, since the start of the pandemic there have been a total of 3,223 deaths involving coronavirus across Stoke-on-trent and Staffordshire. A Covid-19 case is considered healthcare-acquired if a patient tests positive for the virus for the first time at least 15 days after being admitted to the hospital.
The number of nosocomial cases at UHNM has fallen from 88 in November to 68 in January.
Ms Rhodes said: “Those numbers are coming down now. What we are going to do going forward is track these numbers against the community prevalence across Stokeon-trent and Staffordshire.
“As you would expect, our highest peak for nosocomials was when they were at the highest in the community. When the prevalence is so high in the community it’s almost impossible to reduce the numbers in the hospital.”
The number of UHNM staff testing positive for Covid-19 has also reduced ‘significantly’, with just one positive test last week, compared to 120-a-week in November.
And while there were 11 simultaneous Covid outbreaks at UHNM at the peak of the latest wave, there are none at all at the moment.
Ms Rhodes, above, said the trust was aiming to follow national infection control guidance ‘to the letter’ – although it was not always 100 per cent successful in this.
One example she gave was the requirement for patients to return to negative swabs before being moved.
She said: “We haven’t been able to do that consistently, and we know that has caused us some issues.”
Non-executive director Ian Smith said he accepted that there was always going to be some healthcare acquired infections during a pandemic like Covid-19. He said: “The hospital is far from being an ivory tower stuck on a lonely hill – inevitably it reflects its community. As infections go up and go down, it’s going to impact on what happens within the hospital.
“So I have a degree of sympathy with the staff.”