November 22, 2007

9:14am Wednesday 21st November 2007

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SINCE my brief contribution to the debate on the health aspects of the Queen's Speech last week when I concentrated on the quality of health care, I have had a meeting with the chairman and chief executive of the acute hospitals trust and some press and radio exposure.

A criticism of my comments is that in a huge organisation like the Health Service you cannot expect everything to be without fault and I accept that.

However, there are certain complaints that should never arise and these are the ones that I have reported to acute trust chiefs repeatedly during the last few years without demonstrable improvement and this is why I have moved up a gear and taken the issue into Parliament and then inevitably into the media.

I took 10 letters with me to the meeting, all received within the last two months, covering complaints about failures of communication between patients, their families and staff, unhelpful staff attitudes, inadequate fluid and food intake, lack of explanation about a broken arm, delays in responding to calls by patients and alarm calls ignored when staff are seen to be talking and joking at the nurses' station, wet beds not changed and, saddest of all, actual quotes from patients for example, "If you can't eat you don't get anything" and "Get me out of here, they don't know what they are doing".

These complaints are unacceptable at any time and are not unpredictable accidents that can occur anywhere.

Even over-work and staff shortages do not excuse this behaviour and as it is the patients' and their relatives' perception of events, there is no defence if a formal investigation excuses or disputes what happened.

The Healthcare Commission's recent rating of the acute trust's performance on quality issues as "weak" must make everyone take notice and strive for improvement which means care and compassion from every member of staff for every patient - especially the elderly the confused and disabled. I know that the new Director of Nursing Services is concentrating on quality of care and I trust that the letters of complaint to me will decrease in number, showing that there has been an improvement in basic care.

Health debates in the House of Commons are often characterised by complaints from the Opposition benches branded as whinges by Government members who find less fault with the NHS in their constituencies.

I wonder if this is due more to the allegedly better funding of health care in the largely urban and potentially deprived areas represented by Labour MPs than to political motives.

This week I am battling with the enormous annual task of the Health Select Committee - examining the Department of Health's expenditure during the last 12 months.

We receive the answers to over 100 questions in a document of 230 pages which we have to assimilate to hold the department to account at this week's meeting.

DR RICHARD TAYLOR MP for Wyre Forest