Six vulnerable patients died because of uncaring NHS

Health Service and Local Government Ombudsmen reports found that patients with learning difficulties were treated less favourably than others (surely they mean appallingly) and this resulted in "prolonged suffering and inappropriate care". Relatives who complained were effectively ignored.

Mencap, the respected learning disability charity, complained on behalf of the families of six vulnerable people who died in NHS or local authority care between 2003 and 2005, and an investigation was launched.

The Healthcare Commission itself was also criticised.

Mencap wrote about "Death By Indifference"

and here is today's article on the subject in the Telegraph

Charities are calling for new laws to protect the elderly as a study shows that more than 300,000 cases of abuse go undetected each year.

Call for new laws to protect elderly from abuse
article in the Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Cases of abuse of the elderly uncovered by inspectors include care homes where residents were routinely tied to their beds and chairs, locked up or dragged around by their hair.

Other residents, many of whom had dementia, have been refused food and denied trips to the lavatory in punishment for "bad behaviour".

Investigations have revealed a woman of 85 who had her fingernails ripped off by a care worker, a 78-year-old covered in cigarette burns, and a number of thefts of pensions by care staff paid to look after the elderly.

Government research suggests that 340,000 pensioners suffer some form of physical, financial or emotional abuse each year.

Action on Elder Abuse investigated local authority records and found that fewer than a tenth of that number of cases are ever investigated by social services.

The charity, together with the Alzheimer's Society, Age Concern, Mencap, and the Commission for Social Care Inspection, is calling for laws to be introduced which would place a duty on all agencies which work with vulnerable adults to log and investigate reports of abuse – either in residential care or in family homes – and to share information with other agencies.

Currently, different bodies set their own rules about how to protect the frail elderly, and disabled, from harm.

The charities made the plea as part of submissions to a Government consultation on the protection of vulnerable adults, which closed yesterday.

Gary Fitzgerald, chief executive of Action on Elder Abuse, said: "We are simply not doing enough to protect old people facing abuse, and we are challenging the Government to listen and to introduce safeguards that make this a priority."

Neil Hunt of the Alzheimer's Society added: "We need to fight any abuse of people with dementia and that means putting systems in place early to avoid putting them at risk.""

You can reduce your risk of developing dementia by eating less salt/sodium.

A vulnerable patient died of starvation in an NHS hospital after 26 days without food, according to Mencap, the disability charity.

Patient 'died of starvation in NHS hospital'
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Martin Ryan, 43, was left unable to swallow after suffering a stroke but a "total breakdown in communication" meant he was never fitted with a feeding tube.

Doctors thought that nurses were feeding him through a tube in his nose, an internal inquiry by the hospital found.

But by the time they discovered this was not happening, he was too weak for an operation to insert a tube into his stomach. Mr Ryan, who had Down's syndrome, died in agony five days later.

Disability charity Mencap said the case was one of several where the NHS "completely and unacceptably failed" patients with learning difficulties through a "catalogue of disasters".

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman is expected to issue a similarly damning verdict on the NHS later this month.

Other cases highlighted by Mencap include Emma Kemp, 26, who was denied cancer treatment that could have saved her life.

Another patient Mark Cannon, 30, died two months after being admitted to hospital with a broken leg.

Three other cases followed similar patterns, with warnings ignored or problems missed until it was too late, often because the patients had difficulty communicating.

The father of one man who died, who was just 20, said: 'People like my son are treated as less than human'.

The six cases were raised by Mencap in a report entitled Death By Indifference."

Horrific avoidable suffering and death like this would not happen if health professionals were accountable for failures in their duty of care. If the police were to do the inquiries, rather than the hospital, and if the negligent doctors and nurses in this or a similar case were named and shamed and sent for trial for an offence called something like 'professional negligence leading to manslaughter', and received an appropriate sentence - surely a prison sentence - this dreadful cruel neglect would stop immediately. - Although they clearly do not care about the welfare of these patients, they assuredly care about their own...

Mencap report on 'shocking' deaths sparks inquiry into NHS institutional discrimination in treatment of people with learning difficulties

Mencap report on 'shocking' deaths sparks inquiry

Extract:

"Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, has announced an independent inquiry into allegations that six patients died in NHS hospitals as a result of institutional discrimination.

Ms Hewitt said she had been "shocked" to hear details of the cases in a report from Mencap, the charity for people with learning disabilities, and promised the inquiry would be held "without delay".

The cases included a 43-year-old man who went without food for 26 days after suffering a stroke, a 26-year-old woman who was denied treatment for cancer because doctors thought she would be uncooperative and a 30-year-old man with a broken leg who developed pneumonia.

All the patients had severe learning disabilities and communication problems. Mencap said they shared common factors and called for an investigation into the "avoidable" deaths. It said there was "widespread ignorance and indifference" in the NHS to people with learning disabilities.

The report follows a 2004 inquiry by the charity, which exposed the unequal health care given to people with learning disabilities.

The new cases had exposed "underlying bad practice", the charity said. None of the NHS trusts was identified in the report because the complaints are still being investigated by the Healthcare Commission, the NHS inspectorate. Certain ones had been upheld and others referred back to the individual trusts, it said."