More deaths at scandal-hit hospital
A scandal-hit West Midlands hospital today faced allegations of a cover-up after a "secret dossier" revealed more than a dozen patients have died in a new superbug outbreak.
The 13 patients died at Stafford Hospital between January 1 this year and as recently as March 16 – the day before the Healthcare Commission's damning report on the facility was made public.
However, Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which manages the facility, allegedly failed to tell the public about the outbreak, detailed in a leaked Health Protection Agency document.
The Clostridium Difficile (C Diff) victims, most of them elderly, were among 37 patients to be struck down by the intestinal infection over the 10-week period. The other 24 survived.
The revelation comes the day after two further reports on the hospital from Government-appointed experts were published. A report by emergency care expert Sir George Alberti found that improvements have been made but more staff and better equipment are still urgently needed, while an investiagtion into the overall scandal has made national recommendations to health trusts on transparency and accountability.
Trust bosses have repeatedly claimed reduced superbug infection rates are evidence of improvements.
But today Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb said: "This is shocking. No hospital has been under the spotlight more. Yet a superbug outbreak is discovered."
He added: "It is scandalous. People clearly knew about this. Victims of this may have chosen not to go to the hospital had they known about the outbreak."
However, a spokesman insisted the trust had not been hiding the deaths and said that while fatal cases were not published, infection rates were put on its website. "This was not a cover-up," he said.
The trust's director of nursing, Helen Moss, also said an isolation ward was set up as soon as the outbreak was detected.
"All the advice of the Health Protection Agency was followed and their experts declared that they were happy with the way the trust responded," she said.
Stafford woman Julie Bailey, of campaign group Cure the NHS, said patients should be tested for superbugs on both entering and leaving the hospital.
