Britain’s national health service…

FILTHY conditions at a major hospital may have led to up to 71 deaths, it was claimed yesterday.

An inspection by the Government’s Care Quality Commission at Basildon Hospital, Essex, found blood on floors and curtains, and soiled mattresses.

A source at the hospital claims the conditions resulted in a marked rise in fatalities.

And today the chairman of ANOTHER hospital Foundation Trust was removed from his post over a second series of failings.

Hospital regulator Monitor used their powers to force Richard Bourne — chairman of Colchester Hospital University Foundation Trust — to step down over patient safety, leadership and waiting times.

A statement from Monitor said: “Regulatory action has been prompted by the trust’s failure to comply with healthcare standards, its failure to exercise its functions effectively, efficiently and economically, and serious and wide-ranging concerns as to overall governance and leadership at the trust.”

Government investigators had rated the Basildon University Hospital as “good” in October.

It received 13 out of 14 for cleanliness and five out of five for keeping the public healthy.

But then a new inspection team went into the Essex hospital unannounced… and discovered appalling conditions.

In Los Angeles, the county owned and operated King-Drew hospital was closed because it had killed too many patients. This was after five years of attempts to correct the hospital’s defects.

From Wikipedia:

The Fall of King/Drew

King/Drew entered the 21st century with an array of problems related to incompetence and mismanagement. Due to a perceived lack of quality at the hospital, it had earned the nickname of “Killer King”.^[4] Starting with a series of reports in the Los Angeles Times, some of which earned a Pulitzer Prize, the hospital has gone through increasingly severe scrutiny.

[edit] Troubles come to light

On August 22, 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported that two women connected to cardiac monitors died after their deteriorating vital signs went undetected. In December 2003, DHS closed the cardiac monitoring ward of King/Drew after a third patient died under questionable circumstances. A consulting group was hired to help fix issues with the nursing staff, with DHS spending nearly $1 million.

In a January 13, 2004 report, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) determined that King/Drew was out of compliance with minimum requirements for receiving federal funding, citing the work of government inspectors who identified five patients who died at King/Drew after what were determined to have been grave errors by staff members. By March, CMS declared King/Drew patients were in “immediate jeopardy” of harm or death because of medication errors at the hospital, citing numerous mistakes and threatening to pull federal government funding from the public hospital. An example in this report cited a meningitis patient receiving a potent anti-cancer drug for four days. In June CMS again stated that patients were in jeopardy, citing the use of Taser stun guns to subdue psychiatric patients. Yet again, it threatened to pull federal funding but backed away; federal funding makes up over half of King/Drew’s $400 million operating budget.