Exaggerated and Fictitious

Jane Froggatt, Chief Operations Officer at United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust today spilled the beans describing how staff in the ULHT were pressurised to "fiddle" the waiting lists to hide patients from the inpatients waiting list for orthopoedics. Thus it falsely appeared ULHT was meeting its targets, when really there were people waiting over six months for their operation. At least sixteen patients were waiting over 32 months for their operation. In a meeting held in public today, Jane told the Health Scrutiny committee how records had been "exaggerated and fictitious entries made" to make it appear as if the patient was reasonably suspended from the waiting list.

A patient is normally suspended from the waiting list if they need a temporary delay for medical reasons for up to three months. To be on the waiting list, patients need to be fit, available and willing to have the operation. In some areas such as Chesterfield there are as few as 38 patients suspended from the waiting list, but in Lincolnshire we had 1200. In the worst cases, up to 25% of patients were on the suspended list, whereas the guideline is not more than 10%.

Hospital cancellations were wrongly classified as cancellations made by the patient. Staff at ULHT also offered patients non-existent appointments at short notice, and put them to the back of the queue when they refused.

"It was a failure in systems and processes resulting from a culture of fear, bullying and intimidation", said Jane Froggatt.

Leader of the Independent Group, Marianne Overton was appalled. "It is a shocking revelation and deeply disappointing that people have suffered like this. Hiding the truth has allowed it to carry on until now and prevented us from dealing with the issues. It shows the importance of a decent complaints procedure, where complaints are properly investigated by all concerned, not just ULHT. We do need independent "watchdogs" with teeth and commissioners who chase up complaints with determination. The suggestion of a culture of fear and intimidation in ULHT is deeply disturbing and must be promptly remedied.

Clearing the backlog of patients by the end of February will need an increase in capacity and add to the financial troubles of the health service. There is already a shortfall in both money and capacity in Lincolnshire and new contracts need to be set up at NHS tariffs. Technology has advanced and those changes in procedures will also need to be taken into account."

There is a helpline for those who think they may have been affected.

The detailed report now goes to the SHA and may or may not become fully public.
This comes at a time when the government has announced that it proposes taking away the statutory right of inspection, currently held by the three Patient and Public Involvement bodies in Lincolnshire (PPI’s). These represent the patients and public and are able to insist on entry to any premises where health service is delivered. These are also due to merge into one on October 1st, along with the merging of the Primary Care Trusts. In the summer of 2007, it is expected that the PPI’s will be dissolved and replaced by the countywide "Local Information Network" (LINks) – but will it have teeth?