Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
Why are the hospital trusts whose management and staff are responsible for the unnecessary deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of patients, not charged with corporate manslaughter?
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
i thought i heard the health secretary or at least someone important in the government saying that this morning. rightly so after reading the harrowing tales of neglect and total lack of compassion.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
Just watching a documentary about it......staff actually turned off monitors because the bleeping interrupted their form filling. Patients died as a result. Unbelievable.
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
FAQs...
"
Will directors, board members or other individuals be prosecuted?
The offence is concerned with corporate liability and does not apply to directors or other individuals who have a senior role in the company or organisation. However, existing health and safety offences and gross negligence manslaughter will continue to apply to individuals. Prosecutions against individuals will continue to be taken where there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to do so."
http://www.hse.gov.uk/corpmanslaughter/Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
"This guide is based on UK law as at 1st February 2010, unless otherwise stated. It is part of a series of guides on Health and safety and corporate manslaughter.
At its worst, a breach of the health and safety rules has tragic consequences, leading to the loss of life. Historically, though, it's been hard to convict a company of corporate manslaughter (or corporate homicide in Scotland); the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, the King's Cross fire and various rail crashes have all highlighted the problems.
The prosecution had to prove two things: first, that a single individual in the company was guilty of gross negligence manslaughter; second, that this individual was the 'controlling mind' of the company. If there was not enough evidence to convict an individual, there could be no prosecution of the company.
Larger companies therefore frequently escaped conviction as fatal accidents are often the result of failures by a number of people over a period of time. The larger the company, the greater the number; and the less likely the chance of proving that a single person, representing the company's controlling mind, had been grossly negligent.
After much delay, the law in this area was reformed by the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, which came into force on 6 April 2008. A year later, the first prosecution of a company was brought under the new law.
Under the 2007 Act, the focus shifts from an individual failing to a broader failure of management, determined by a threefold test. An offence is committed if the way an organisation manages or organises its activities:
caused a person's death;
amounted to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care owed by the organisation to the victim; and
senior management played a substantial part in the breach."
http://www.out-law.com/page-11163Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
"Partial exemptions"
"These include: ...
...Functions that, by their nature, require statutory (or prerogative) authority. This does not exempt an activity simply because statute provides an organisation with the power to carry it out (as is the case, for example, with legislation relating to NHS bodies and local authorities)...
...In relation to medical emergencies, section 6(3) states that the exemption does not apply to the administration of medical treatment but it does apply to a decision over which patient should be tended to first. For example an ambulance crew is deployed to the scene of a motorway crash involving multiple victims. They arrive at the scene and administer first aid to a victim with minor injuries, leaving a victim, with more serious injuries, to suffer without tending to them. There is no 'relevant' duty of care arising from the decision as to the order in which the patients are to be treated.
The ambulance service does not owe a relevant duty of care until the ambulance crew tend to a patient and administer medical treatment. Therefore it does not matter, for the purposes of the Act, how slowly they drove to the scene. It is also irrelevant for these purposes that the crew chose to ignore the more seriously injured. It is only when they tend to the patient that the organisation takes on a duty of care for that particular patient..."
http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/corporate_manslaughter/ Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
Yes Tom I am well versed in the law. That's why I can't understand why the DPP hasn't instituted prosecutions. According to the three tests under the 2007 act, it ought to be game, set and match. But of course it was only expected that this Act would be used against private companies.......
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
I have not got into the detail of this case, but it must make for horrific reading.
If all that follows the 'and' at the foot of #5 can be asserted with confidence then I can only agree with you that prosecution should happen.
However,
"and senior management played a substantial part in the breach." is a long way from pulling the plug because of the annoying noise of a monitoring machine.
Is the documentary available to see online?
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
It was on BBC1 at 9.30pm tonight.
Reports of such occurrences from junior and not so junior staff were ignored at management level. The chap who sat on it all at Stafford is now national head of the NHS. Can it get any worse? No doubt the hospital management profession and the civil servants (I choose my words carefully) will contrive to move the blame onto both the junior nurses and the politicians. And some people honestly seem to believe that a privatised system would cause a deterioration in patient care. You would have to sample a government hospital in Somalia to experience worse care.
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
Sorry, it was on the BBC news channel (Freeview 80). It's called 'The hospital that didn't care'. Try this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/episode/b01qnlc9I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
Nope shouldn't matter if private or public all should be done
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
In 2010 I read in a newspaper that patients drank water from the saucers under plant pots in their room because they were so thirsty, and the staff would not bring them water even when they requested it.
Guest 710- Registered: 28 Feb 2011
- Posts: 6,950
I have just watched the documentary.
Things have not improved overall by recent changes.
Rather than spreading the butter too thinly, as was the case previously, they now cut fewer slices off the same loaf.
The monitoring machines were not switched off, the auditory signal was disabled, and it seems to have been done because the sound was annoying, generally.
Things have become increasingly technical in nursing and their classroom education has struck me as inadequate and is too often mismatched with the on the job practical training. [my driving instructor could tell when I had been listening to the advice of non-professional drivers, by some marked decrease in my proficiency..cheeky bugger]
All in all, it seems to me that
-pressure from the Government to clean up the hospital's finances in order to achieve Trust Status.
-Giving the job of doing this to someone without a medical background, but with a working knowledge of how to make the statistics fit with the desired outcome,
-and leaving all oversight teams toothless, is what went wrong.
Not asking the correct questions, but getting all the right answers.
I cannot view this as an NHS problem, in so far as it was the business practices overriding the medical necessities that led to the failings at this Mid-Staffs hospital.
A privatised section of the NHS would have a far harder time closing down parts of a hospital, as and when staffing levels fall, and maintain it's credibility...not with recourse to more and more funding.
The health service could do better with less interference from Government, but chucking it wholesale into private hands would be far worse.
Take care of the penny-patients for the pound-pundits will only take care of themselves.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
Import the third world you get the third world
If you fill the NHS with third world professionals, there standards will come with them.
This coupled with bean counters and transient agency workers, it's not surprising.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
what do you expect kieth,uk unis spewing out experianced medicos and support staff.
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
yes
The standards are set during training
And robbing staff from the poorest country's in the world is not good
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
If siblings or family carer's conducted themselves in this way they would be charged with murder.
Keith #16
I agree with this and have seen it for myself.
Some on here though, would blame that on lazy idle home-grown workers, choosing a benefit lifestyle over working for crap wages in a job that has lost its compassion, through these agencies.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
kiethb,do you relise it takes up to 15 years to become a fully qulyfied docter,5 years in uni and 10 in actull hands on in hospital.