A DAMNING indictment of the management culture at Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust has been delivered by one of its own consultants.

In an exclusive interview with The Westmorland Gazette, the whistle-blower called for ‘senior resignations across the trust’ following a catalogue of failures affecting patient care.

The clinician, who has asked not to be identified ‘for fear of reprisals’, claimed bosses at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Trust (UHMBT) were ‘obsessed with hitting targets and box ticking’ rather than patients’ needs.

He said UHMBT’s chief executive Tony Halsall, ought to be ‘considering his position’ and called on the Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, to intervene.

“The groundswell of opinion among clinical staff is that there should be senior resignations across the trust,” the consultant said.

“If a doctor or nurse had made mistakes of a similar magnitude, they would have been struck off.”

The consultant’s views were echoed by the patients’ pressure group South Lakes Health Action, which called on the trust board to ‘resign en-masse’.

The Westmorland Gazette put all the consultant’s comments to the trust.

The trust declined to respond to the clinician’s allegations of management failure and the calls for resignations but concentrated on recent problems involving delays in outpatient follow-up appointments.

It said that additional clinics and members extra members of staff were helping to ensure all urgent cases affected by delays were seen by December 3 and that an experienced hospital operations expert had been brought in to lead this work.

UHMBT, which runs Westmorland General Hospital (WGH), Furness General Hospital (FGH) and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary (RLI), has attracted criticism since the summer over a series of clinical failures which include:

  • The death of baby Joshua Titcombe at FGH’s maternity unit
  • The revelation that more than 30,000 patients could have had treatment delayed because of follow-up appointment failures
  • Higher than average mortality rates
  • Claims that patients are having to wait in ambulances outside RLI because the A & E department sometimes cannot cope with emergency cases

The consultant hit out at ‘lame duck management with no credibility’ and said: “I have never seen morale in the trust so low among senior clinical staff.”

The consultant described the failure to notify patients of follow-up appointments as ‘the worst problem the trust faces’ with more than 30,000 being affected.

Last month, it was revealed that patients’ records were being stored haphazardly around the three hospitals, sometimes piled up on office floors, which meant they were difficult to locate when needed by clinical staff.

He said there were parallels with the mid-Staffordshire hospital deaths scandal, which led to a public inquiry that blamed ‘shocking systematic failures of hospital care’.

“We have no idea how many patients may have suffered adverse outcomes as a result of this,” said the consultant.

“There is no doubt that people’s lives are being put at risk because of these failures.”

The consultant also claimed there had been ‘a failure of governance’ at the trust.

Although one governor, John Kaye, had criticised management ‘mistakes’ earlier this month, the consultant insisted governors generally had not ‘grasped the magnitude of the problem’.

The consultant also accused UHMBT of focusing too much on empire building.

This, in part, is a reference to the trust’s bid to take over the troubled North Cumbria NHS Trust – a bid that was dropped by Mr Halsall after the follow-up appointments scandal at UHMBT was revealed.

UHMBT is being scrutinised by foundation trust regulator Monitor, which was called in following the Furness maternity scandal.

The trust’s directors have previously indicated they will not step down.

However, if Monitor is not satisfied with the trust’s performance it can remove them.