Basingstoke hospital slips £200,000 into the red

THE Hampshire hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which manages several local hospitals including Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, has slipped £200,000 into the red this financial year.

At a board meeting held at the end of last month, the financial performance of the trust, which also manages the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester and the Andover War Memorial Hospital, was revealed in a report by its chief financial officer, David French.

Reasons given for the deficit included the delayed opening of the radiotherapy unit, £137,000 in clinical penalties for missing targets, and the fact that clinical income was £500,000 less than had been hoped.

The board also heard a report by medical director Andrew Bishop on patient safety during the preceding month. It was stated that investigations were then under way into 11 serious instances requiring intervention (SIRIs) during May.

These included the case of a two month- old baby who was admitted to the orthopaedics ward at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital on May 2 and discharged the next day. The baby died at home within 24 hours of discharge.

Another patient died in recovery, following surgery after breaking a femur in a fall at the Winchester hospital.

At the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital, there was an MRSA outbreak involving three patients.

A total of 40 complaints had been received by the trust during May, concerning poor patient care, including staff attitude and manner, lack of compassion, privacy and dignity, waiting times, and communication, discharge and administration delays.

The report said that all these had received a letter of apology, and remedial action had been taken, including the booking of new appointments and increasing the number of ophthalmology clinics to reduce waiting times.

A total 36 letters of thanks had been received during the month, 24 of which were for the Basingstoke hospital.

Under the NHS Choices scoring system, six people left a five-star rating following experiences in various departments at the Basingstoke hospital, which received an overall four star-rating, based on 89 ratings.

In a safe staffing report given by the chief operating officer and nursing director Donna Green, the board was told that staff-to-patient ratios across the trust’s three hospitals in May had reached one member of staff to eight patients in the medicine departments, owing to nursing vacancies and staff shortages.