Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS

90 patients die from MRSA & C.difficile infections in hospitals run by Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.

In a move possibly unique within this government, where abject failure and lack of responsibility are watchwords, Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, has ordered the NHS trust to withhold severance payments from its former Chief Executive, Rose Gibb.

Johnson described the deaths as 'scandalous' and Medical Director Dr Malcom Stewart said that the trust 'was changing the way it offered services internally and externally, opening an independent sector treatment centre, managing a financial deficit as well as applying for foundation trust status.' Silly me, I thought doctors were interested in making the sick better!

One of the causes of the huge increases in hospital infections is the constant pressure from both this government and the previous one, to reduce costs within the NHS. This led to cleaning being subcontracted, the removal of the all-powerful Matron, and hospitals employing armies of paper shufflers. Hospitals exist to make us better when ill, and every patient MUST be treated with basic human dignity.

Ms Gibb, previously Chief Exec of North Middlesex Hospital when it was labeled the worst in the country for cases of MRSA, was this week described as being obsessed with targets. Given that the Labour government is itself obsessed with targeting and measuring everything, but not actually improving much, I would have thought that she would have been Labour's poster girl, not its scapegoat.