The Hospital That Didn't Care

Stafford Hospital. Abuse and neglect led to the unnecessary

It is Christmas, 2007. In a town with a dark secret. Patients were

left in horrific situations and conditions. It was just patience

screaming out, banging on the doors. It was absolute bedlam. I thought

the only way I would get out of that place was in a wooden box.

years, appalling care at an NHS hospital has gone unnoticed. But in

a cafe less than a mile away, a group of strangers are about to

discover the truth. There are hundreds of patients that have been

suffering and dying from neglect. It was dreadful and awful. It

should never have happened. This is the story of what went wrong. And

The story starts in July 2001. With another NHS scandal. And an

opportunity missed. Up to 35 babies died unnecessarily at Bristol Royal

Infirmary. Appalling care at Bristol Royal Infirmary has led to

the deaths of dozens of babies. Investigators claim the system of

monitoring care in hospitals is completely inadequate. They demand

urgent reform. An -- be issued this chilling warning. For good Bristol

happen again? Could it be happening right now? The honest answer is

that it could. If it were happening, we would only have a slight chance

of knowing. Sir Ian Kennedy was right. It did happen again. And no-

one saw it coming. July, 2004. It is more than three years since the

Bristol inquiry. A new hospital watchdog, the Healthcare Commission,

has helped restore faith in the health service. But has it really

made a difference? One woman is about to find out. Mickelham Monty

has just given birth to her second child. But she returns to Stafford

Hospital with a bowel condition. It is a decision she will always

regret. 11 it was a very busy ward. Chaotic. Not very clean. Pilots

were often felt be. -- toilets. -- filthy. I had to provide a stool

samples that were left in cardboard pots. Those would accumulate in the

toilets. The staff were not taking them away. Not only my own, but

other people's. That would lead to cross-infection. That is exactly

what happened. In the conditions, Nicola pick up not one hospital

superbugs, but three. She spends the next nine months in hospital.

Much of it in crippling pain. Saura swarmed all over her body. Some

more than a foot wide. But the hospital hardly seemed to care.

They found out that I had the infection and walked into my

isolation room. She walked inside the door and threw a piece of paper

in my direction and told me to read that. It was horrendous. I had been

in hospital a long time. I could not see my children. I was isolated,

stuck in a room on my own. Only my husband came to see me. Hours every

day with me. I was still incredibly lonely and frightened. What she did

not know was that the hospital's problems spread far beyond her ward.

Towards the end of her stay, a member of the local patients group

does a local inspection. The area itself was dirty. There were

hypodermic needles out of dressings on the floor. Patients were coming

in and going out and doctors and medical staff touching those

patients and going to another patient and touching them. No

gloves, with their hands. It does not leave much to the imagination

that the probability of some form of cross infection is much higher.

He was so alarmed he wrote a report. He expected the patients group to

call on the hospital to take urgent action. But to his dismay, they did

not. There was a culture of working hand-in-hand with the hospital and

not upsetting the hospital. And there was the fear of that because

of the nature of the report, that it would cause friction between the

hospital and the PPI. They felt that the report should be, for want

of a better word, watered down. protest, he left the group. He went

directly to the hospital's new chief executive. Martin Yates had

just inherited a poor management structure, a shortage of nurses and

a multi-million pound debt. He told Terry that his report had prompted

improvements. But he was not satisfied. He complained again.

views are exaggerated. Has spent about seven or eight minutes with

him at the outside. It was not very long. Someone else was also trying

to raise the alarm. Someone on the inside. A nurse. I had seen people

die in in a very undignified situations that could have been

avoided. They were relatively frequent. On a daily basis, the

poorer care and standards should never have been allowed. She blamed

chronic under staffing and poor equipment. She asked managers to

take urgent action. Instead, they told her simply to fill out an

incident report. During her six years she would submit nearly 100

forms. Not once was she given any indication they were even read.

Things did not get listened to war -- or acted upon. It went right to

the top. People were just not listening. That is why things got

so extreme. The Department of Health then hands all hospitals two

daunting new challenges. In Stafford, chief executive Martin

Yates is just two months into the job. But he was told to balance the

hospital's books and win Foundation Trust status. As a Foundation Trust,

Stafford would have more control over its affairs. But again, the

condition is a healthy bank balance. And Stafford now owes �10 million.

The instruction was quite clear. Of money needed to be saved. The trust

had to do that in any way it could. Ultimately, that led to them making

some dangerous decisions in the years that followed. The meeting

sets in motion 18 months of savage cuts. Chief executive Martin Yates

makes 150 staff redundant. Next year we have got an issue to deal

with. We are taking those tough decisions now so we can continue

that long-term financial sustainability. But it was far from

excellent. This tough decisions had an unintended impact on patient

care. Staff became obsessed with noticed

noticed when she was given a new bestrode up, the nurses said, you

do realise this little bag costs? About �700. As if you are not

were were also feeling the pinch. A lack

of staff, lack of equipment. The reason always given is that we are

going for a foundation status. Once we get that status, that would get

better. That is a lot of why people did not speak out. And we thought

that given time things would improve. The pressure was coming

right from the top. The government was telling all hospitals to not

only break even, but also to go for a foundation trust status. But

Labour politicians denied they are partly to blame for what happened

at Stafford. In a sense, that suggests that the chief executive

was right to cut staff and put receptionists on trio's nursing

pressure. I do not accept that at all. That was a disgracefully bad

management. A year on, and Stafford's dark secret remains

hidden. George Dalziel goes into hospital for an operation. His wife

goes with him. What they do not know is that the hospital now has

one of the highest death rates in England. Nobody was warned. It was

at hing at that time. If it had been my way,

he would not have gone in there. -- if I had been aware. He is

operation is a success. But the couple's joy is short-lived. His

epidural becomes dislodged, leaving him without pain relief for days.

He is given the wrong food. That makes him throw up faeces. He is

left unsold bedclothes for hours. He is too scared to ask his nose

for water. He was frightened to drink. He was frightened he would

wet the bed again. She was so nasty with him. He had to call her. They

were left on their own all the time. If they ring the bells, it was rare

if the nurses or any body came to see them. George was a brave man.

He was always to reclaim. To be put in a position that he was put in,

he felt ashamed and disgusted. He was so upset. When Christine visits

her husband, she is so horrified by his condition that she demands to

see a doctor. I helped to get his jacket of so she could examine him.

Sorry. When I did it, his bones were just sticking out. I said,

what on earth are you doing to him? He should not be like this. During

his two weeks in hospital, George Dalziel had lost 3.5 stone. His

strength had gone. When we were leaving, I said, I love you. And he

says, I love you too. And that was the last words we said. That night,

George Dalziel was added to the growing list of people who went

into Stafford Hospital, but never came out. But what Christine did

not know was that the list was being monitored by a group of

statisticians. 140 miles away in London. The reason we started doing

this is because after the Bristol inquiry, I realised that there were

problems that could be detected by analysing the data. I wanted to

make sure that Bristol did not happen again. We would send a

letter to hospitals around the country and say this was an early

warning. And in 2007, one hospital Each month, I am my colleague sent

a letter to the chief executive Martin Yates and said we noticed

you have a high death-rate for this particular diagnosis. It is

possible it could be codeine or quality of care. Would you like to

look and see if there are any problems. But managers and their

NHS bosses will weary. They already suspected there were serious flaws

in the way the hospital clerk to the data and so they commissioned a

team of academics to investigate whether there could be another

investigation. Their reaction was to employ somebody else effectively

to try to discredit us and that was very frustrating and frustrating

that they would not allow us to explain what the problem us. There

were many people dying over that period. And they are the dying in

their hundreds. Then in September came a day when

the people of Stafford began to fight back. 86 he ruled Bella

Bailey is admitted to hospital with a hernia. With her is an expert,

someone who would ultimately bring staff have's problems to the nation.

Her daughter is a senior social worker. -- Stafford's. It was

appalling. No proper food, care, she was lying in a wet bed. If it

was not for us being there, we would have lost her in the first

week. Julie Bailey was so concerned, she insisted on staying at her

mother's bedside during the night and it was then she saw how

desperate some patients had become. I was told they could not leave

drinks out at night because of health and safety. So what the

confused patients would do is get out of bed and the first thing they

found would be a flower vase and they would just drink out of that.

It was absolutely ridiculous. November the eighth, 2007, Bella

Bailey died and her daughter's campaign began. She made an

official complaint but have found the response alarming. She said she

had never seen anything like what I had seen and she walked towards day

and night. That really shocked me and I knew. I was so desperate and

I knew that if I had seen those things, other people must have. If

I had lost someone that way, other people must have. I knew alone I

would achieve little with that sort of response from hospital. So Julie

Bailey appealed for help. In a letter to a local newspaper, she

asked anyone with concerns about the hospital to get in touch and

set up a meeting. The response was overwhelming. My priority was to

try to stop what was going on in the hospital. When people started

to write, it was a shock because I only had 16 seats. -- started to

arrive. Around 25 people turned up. As they concave story, the sheer

scale of the scandal becomes clear. Stafford's secret comes out. A

campaign group is formed. They call themselves Cure the NHS. Inside the

hospital, staff are also starting to speak out, exposing more scandal.

One nurse writes a report, telling senior managers that in A&E,

patient records have been routinely adopted in order to meet government

targets. Weeting Heath times change so they appear to fall below the

four and would limit. -- waiting times. The main culprits would

routinely do this and they would encourage other staff to do it.

Doctors and nurses. And if they did not want to, such as myself, they

would become very aggressive and bullying basically into making

people do it. The hospital investigates and Hans two nurses in

prison up notices but concludes there is not enough evidence to

take it further. She resigns. February 2008. The campaign to

expose poor care at Stafford is gathering pace. In London, health

service regulators are about to launch a full investigation,

triggered by the alarmingly high death-rate. In Stafford, Julie

Bailey is protesting outside the hospital. But inside, staff are

putting up balloons. The reason? Stafford has just been awarded

Foundation Trust status. In the eyes of the NHS, it is now a

flagship hospital. You can imagine, standing outside with banners, and

one of the staff, the managers from the hospital, came out and told us,

we have just been awarded Foundation Trust status. I asked

what it meant. They said, it's a flagship hospital. There is nothing

wrong here, he said. It was like a slap in the face. Stafford Hospital

faced an imminent investigation. It had one of the highest death rates

in England and a public campaign against it and yet it was allowed

to join the Premier League of hospitals. Giving it greater

freedom to do as it pleased. One evening, just one month later, a

group of experts from the Healthcare Commission conduct a

surprise inspection that will alter that we expose one of the biggest

scandals in the history of the health service. -- ultimately

exposed. There were clearly problems but whether it was in the

emergency, the medical wards or on the surgical wards, problems were

there. Simple compassion and kindness, those were missing. But

also, the more technical side of things. Weather observations were

done properly and recorded properly. Whether equipment was used properly.

Can you imagine a situation which because nurses do not understand

cardiac monitors and are annoyed by their bleeding, they turn the

monitors off? -- BB&T. Investigators find hundreds of

patients have died from incompetence and neglect. But when

they confront chief executive Martin Yates they are stunned by

his response. He was actually shocked at what we were telling him

and that in itself is difficult because really you should know what

is going on in your own hospital. The man in charge may not have

known the scale of the problem but, by March 2009, everyone did.

Routinely neglected. A damning inquiry concludes Stafford Hospital

lost sight of its responsibility. If for years, 25 NHS watchdogs

missed what was going on. But finally, after hundreds of decks,

thousands of complaints and a catalogue of reports, the man at

the top was told. -- of deaths. were appalled by Stafford ANI

publicly apologised on behalf of the Department of Health. It was

awful and should never have happened. Should I have done

something to pick up on bid earlier? Maybe. I don't know.

in Stafford, the hospital's chief executive Martin Yates was

suspended. He acknowledged the hospital's failings of apologised.

Five years after the first complaints, something had finally

changed. I struggle to find any satisfaction in knowing we were

right all along. I was made to feel that I was the exception, that this

sort of thing was... I was the unfortunate one person that this

had happened to and it was how I responded to the situation but it

wasn't. Lots of people were suffering and still continue to

suffer today. This is the story of appalling and unnecessary suffering

of hundreds of people. The findings of an inquiry into why

the scandal was allowed to happen have now been made public. Robert

Francis described a catalogue of failings at every level of the NHS.

I have today made 290 recommendations, designed to change

this culture and make sure that patients come first. Everything we

have heard today it tells us this was systemic failings from the ward,

write to the top. Just as they did after the Bristol inquiry,

politicians have promised to learn from the mistakes of the past.

will create a single regime where the suspension of the board can be

triggered by failings in care, as well as failings in finance. We

will put the boys of patients and staff at the heart of the way

hospitals go about their business. -- the voice. For those who fought

for change for so long, it's a defining moment. Very emotional. We

will all be glad when it is over and just hope that now people of

Stafford will understand what we have tried to do. Not for ourselves

now, just for them. In Stafford, the hospital's future is uncertain.

Riddled with debt, it survives only on government handouts. But there

is a new chief executive with a new strategy. Now, when they are short

of staff, it simply closes its doors. There comes a point when you

have to make difficult decisions around safety. In the case of the

emergency department, that is what we do. There is no point trying to

run a walk safely if you have not got the right number of nurses and

doctors. I think the care is very much better than it was two or

three years ago. We are not perfect, we do not get it right every time,

but I think the standards have dramatically improved.

Perhaps, finally, Stafford has a hospital we can trust. But those

who suffered their have heard it all before. They have wasted so