SHOCKING REPORT REVEALS NEW CATALOGUE Hospital’s dossier of DISASTER 4 kids and 3 adults died after ‘basic failures of care’
THREE babies died, a cancer patient was starved of oxygen and a child suffered brain damage in a string of failings at a scandal-hit hospital.
Nearly two years after North Middlesex Hospital was ordered to improve following a Sunday People campaign, we can reveal a new catalogue of blunders.
The number of serious incidents at the North London hospital rose from 81 between 2016 and 2017 to 88 in the 12 months up to this April.
And there were SIX “never events” in the 12 months to April. These are serious incidents so avoidable they should never happen. Patient safety experts say basic failures of care are to blame for many of the shocking deaths and cases of serious harm we have uncovered. Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth is so concerned he has called on the Government to launch an urgent investigation. The most disturbing incidents include: ■A girl of four brain-damaged after A&E sent her home without waiting for test results that, it is claimed, would have supported allegations she was being poisoned with insulin. A cancer patient whose heart stopped after being accidentally hooked up to an airflow meter rather than an oxygen supply. ■A woman with learning difficulties who died from blood poisoning after A&E doctors treated her for nappy rash and sent her home.
■A 15-year-old boy who had to have a testicle removed after A&E medics failed to spot it was twisted.
The horrifying cases are among a backlog of 40 serious incidents still being investigated. Nine deaths in the 40 cases have been reported to the coroner.
Scathing
Most took place between last autumn and spring but a handful date back to 2016 and early last year.
The cases – revealed in the hospital’s board papers after bosses backtracked on a decision to withhold details from the public – include 16 where the patient did not survive.
Three babies, one child and 12 adults were among that death toll.
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