Patients are being put in danger because of a backlog of hundreds of millions of pounds of urgent repairs at hospitals.

Patient safety at risk as NHS repairs ignored
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"More than half of hospital trusts have a backlog of repairs which the NHS says need to be urgently completed to ensure patient safety.

The NHS defines the work is so pressing that it “must be addressed with urgent priority in order to prevent catastrophic failure, major disruption to clinical services or deficiencies in safety liable to cause serious injury and/or prosecution”.

Yet despite the urgency of the work, the new figures show that the level of outstanding urgent repairs rose last year, by £11 million to £310 million.

Crumbling buildings and failings in the infrastructure of hospitals have been repeatedly linked to risks to patient safety.

Last year, the official investigation into Britain’s deadliest outbreak of the infection Clostridium Difficile, which killed more than 90 patients at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells hospitals cited its high maintenance backlog as a contributing factor in the spread of the disease."