LEAGUE tables produced in 2000 revealed that the Royal Bolton Hospital was firmly at the bottom, having a higher patient death rate than any similar hospital throughout the country for the year 1998/99.
In September 2001, the Bolton Evening News reported that the Commission for Health Improvement (CHI) had revealed that, during the year 1998/99, 5,710 patients had died within 30 days of surgery at the Royal Bolton Hospital. In the same year, a staggering 12,357 patients died at the hospital -- 3,000 higher than the national average.
The CHI said the figures did not necessarily imply poor clinical performance, but investigators revealed "serious difficulties" in meeting waiting list targets. Patients were dying, possibly because they were in such poor health when they finally had surgery.
After this report, hospital bosses said they would "complete an action plan within six weeks and put the plan in place immediately after that".
On April 5 this year, the Bolton Evening News reported that the Royal Bolton Hospital has the highest patient death rate in the North-west. So what happened to the action plan?
It seems to me that a new action plan is urgently needed, one which would hopefully involve getting rid of a good many non-clinical managerial jobs -- we have more managers in the NHS than patients -- and replacing them with doctors and nurses.
Brian Derbyshire
Ribchester Grove
Bolton
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