Mid Staffs scandal – action … at last
At last! A criminal investigation has been launched into the death of a patient at scandal-hit Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust where up to 1,200 people died needlessly.
But this isn’t a police investigation – it’s the Health and Safety Executive who will be investigating the death of Gillian Astbury, 66, who was diabetic and died in 2007 at Stafford Hospital after nurses forgot to give her insulin.
If this investigation leads to charges being brought, it will be the first time that anyone has been prosecuted over the Mid-Staffs scandal. About time.
Remember how everyone’s been bleating about ‘culture’ and ‘targets’ being the problem at Mid Staffs? But nothing excuses the cruelty, abuse and mismanagement.
So now let’s have proper criminal investigations. And, if the complacent head of the NHS is implicated … let him face the music too.
He and ‘Dave’ say scapegoating is wrong. And so it is. But a scapegoat takes the blame for the sins of others. But if those ‘others’ – managers and medical staff – are found negligent and at fault … then let them face the consequences too.
Remember that the Francis inquiry highlighted “appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people” at the Trust between 2005 and 2009 and concluded it had put “corporate self-interest and cost control ahead of quality and patient safety”?
Up to 1,200 patients may have died needlessly after they were “routinely neglected”. Many were left in their own urine and excrement for days, forced to drink water from vases or given the wrong medication.
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