Having lived under Britain’s NHS, I try to tell my lefty friends that they don’t really want government health care – but to no avail. It’s not about health care anyway, it’s about control and patients be damned.
Well, patients are surely damned at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals in Essex. Here’s a house of horrors, described in the UK Telegraph:
Poor nursing care, filthy wards and lack of leadership at Basildon and Thurrock University NHS Hospitals FoundationTrust led to the deaths of up to 400 patients a year.
Figures compiled by a health watchdog showed death rates at the Essex trust were a third higher than they should have been.
Get your barf bag ready for the findings:
The key findings of the report were:
- appalling hygiene and cleanliness in A&E
- patients left in A&E for ten hours and treated in full view of others
- four deaths among patients with learning disabilties
- a lack of children’s nurses and doctors in A&E
- blood splattered on curtains and mould in vital equipment
- lack of basic nursing skills with failure to feed patients or give medication correctly
- elderly patients frequently developing bed sores, prompting concerns from nearby care homes.
But of course no one was held to account:
Concerns about death rates at the foundation hospital trust were first raised a year ago, but an internal investigation failed to find anything wrong and managers dismissed the concerns.
And it won’t matter here, either, if we’re stuck with PelosiCare. Stop your complaining and embrace the future.
Good stuff from Ed Morrissey on the Rasmussen report showing that we really do like our health care. More on the Telegraph report from Powerline.
