NHS trust guilty of two safety failings

AN NHS trust has pleaded guilty to safety failings posing a “significant risk of avoidable harm” following the deaths of two patients.

A lawyer acting for the Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust yesterday admitted two breaches of the 2008 Health and Social Care Act on the Trust’s behalf.

A hearing at the town’s magistrates’ court was told the proceedings followed an investigation by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) into the care provided by the trust before the deaths of mother-of-six Natalie Billingham and teenager KaysieJane Robinson.

The charges admitted by the trust stated that it had failed to provide treatment in a safe way, resulting in harm, in February and March 2018.

In a statement issued earlier this year, the CQC said it had brought the prosecution following two specific incidents in which patients died at Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley.

A previous hearing was told by counsel for the CQC, Ian Bridge, that the charges related to clinical care given to 33-year-old Ms Billingham before her death, and to Kaysie-Jane, who was 14 when she died.

He told the court both patients had been treated for sepsis.

The Dudley Group Trust’s lawyer, Paul Spencer, said the organisation’s guilty plea in respect of Natalie Billingham was being entered on the basis that it did not accept its failings led to her death.

But Mr Spencer added that the trust did accept that the “poor care and treatment” of KaysieJane Robinson had caused her death. A further case management hearing will take place at the same court on September 3.