Bristol NHS ‘disgusting’
Posted: 5th March 2014
Posted in: Medical Negligence Wrongful & Accidental Death
The family of a young boy who died shortly after heart surgery in Bristol Children’s Hospital have referred to NHS issues as “disgusting”. Luke Jenkins (7) was submitted to Bristol Children’s Hospital having suffered a cardiac arrest; he died shortly after heart surgery in March 2012. Luke’s parents recently discovered that his death was not recorded accurately in official figures submitted by the hospital. They complained to the medical director of the NHS, who replied with an apology admitting that there must have been a data error.
Bristol’s NHS trust were unable to identify how the error occurred, but promised to ensure that such a mistake would not repeat itself. The figures have now been amended, and the trust has highlighted the hospital’s 30-day mortality rate for the Fontan procedure, (a form of heart surgery) “remains entirely within the expected range”.
‘Investigation reaching back to 2012’
Luke Jenkins from Cardiff was expected to make a full recovery following his surgery in March 2012. In the year of 2012, the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR) recorded that no deaths had occurred as a result of the heart operation that Luke underwent. This was raised as a great concern, as mortality rates are of paramount importance in highlighting areas of danger in surgical units. A spokesperson from NICOR said that a thorough investigation is currently ongoing to explore how the error occurred, with the investigation reaching back to 2012.
Bristol University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “We take the recording and monitoring of mortality data very seriously … From our own initial investigations it has not been possible to fully determine how this error occurred.”
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