North West London Hospitals trust Board, 25 February 2009
1. The fire and the power failure. The fire at NPH on 11 February started with the generators in the basement, causing a lot of smoke to rise through the main ward block. Nobody was injured, about 170 patients had to be moved, no one suffered more than ‘some discomfort’. A culture of regular fire drills helped, with staff knowing what to do. Problems included moving patients connected to various items of (electrical) equipment. A & E was out of action for a few hours. Some patients were moved to other hospitals. One of the consequences of the fire is that there is a temporary reduction in the number of beds available but it is hoped this will be only for a short time.
A few days earlier there had been a power failure, soon after midnight on one of the coldest nights. The power supply in Sudbury failed, affecting about 900 homes and the hospital. The emergency supply kicked in immediately apart from one unit, which had to be started manually. The whole incident took about 4 hours to resolve.
2. Finance. There has been a lot of newspaper publicity about the reduction of next year’s budget by about £32 M and naturally this was an important item. The expectation is that the in-year financial outcome will be a ‘break even’ situation. As the stated intention is to make these savings without affecting the quality of the service there is much interest in how this can be done but nothing was said about this.
3. Performance All quite satisfactory. The number of MRSA and C. Difficile cases is well down on the (not to be exceeded) targets. The trust gets some bad ratings from the Healthcare Commission surveys but the reason is interesting. Patients are given questionnaires, to be returned by them to the Commission. It seems that the proportion of NWLH patients who submit such questionnaires is lower than the HC would like – and the trust gets a bad grading because of this. This seems unfair to me. There is more: the questionnaires are only in English yet the NWLH Trust clientele is roughly 50% non-English and the questionnaires are many pages long.
A few days earlier there had been a power failure, soon after midnight on one of the coldest nights. The power supply in Sudbury failed, affecting about 900 homes and the hospital. The emergency supply kicked in immediately apart from one unit, which had to be started manually. The whole incident took about 4 hours to resolve.
2. Finance. There has been a lot of newspaper publicity about the reduction of next year’s budget by about £32 M and naturally this was an important item. The expectation is that the in-year financial outcome will be a ‘break even’ situation. As the stated intention is to make these savings without affecting the quality of the service there is much interest in how this can be done but nothing was said about this.
3. Performance All quite satisfactory. The number of MRSA and C. Difficile cases is well down on the (not to be exceeded) targets. The trust gets some bad ratings from the Healthcare Commission surveys but the reason is interesting. Patients are given questionnaires, to be returned by them to the Commission. It seems that the proportion of NWLH patients who submit such questionnaires is lower than the HC would like – and the trust gets a bad grading because of this. This seems unfair to me. There is more: the questionnaires are only in English yet the NWLH Trust clientele is roughly 50% non-English and the questionnaires are many pages long.
Paul
posted by Community Voice at
12:19 pm
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