'My ignored report could have stopped deaths at hospital'

The doctor who was sent to investigate Northwick Park hospital said he warned health bosses of serious failings but was ignored. Two years later the hospital was engulfed in scandal after it emerged 10 mothers had died in childbirth there over four years.

Dr Howard Baderman, former consultant in A&E medicine at University College London Hospital, spoke out after appalling conditions at a hospital in Stafford were revealed last week.

Inspectors said the conditions at Mid Staffordshire Hospitals Trust could have cost hundreds of lives and said patients were so thirsty they were reduced to drinking water from flower vases.

Dr Baderman, 73, said: "I was astonished when the Secretary of State said he could not understand why the situation had not been picked up earlier. From my experience this is not an isolated case."

The Department of Health sent Dr Baderman and a team of other doctors to Northwick Park in 2003 to investigate claims that A&E waiting-time figures had been falsified, he said.

He wrote a highly critical report about the hospital and its senior management. But the report was rewritten so extensively by the Department of Health that Dr Baderman made them remove his name from it.

It later emerged that 10 new mothers died after blunders in the maternity department between 2002 and 2005.

Dr Baderman said: "Sooner or later it was going to happen because the management style was so clearly hazardous and inappropriate."

Dr Baderman was so distraught that his report had been rewritten that he did not work for the Department of Health again.

He said: "There were modifications to almost every paragraph and certain key parts were omitted altogether. None of the detailed, pointed and clear-cut criticisms we made appeared in the final version."

Dr Baderman said the Department of Health told him the report was problematic because managers at the hospital were "very highly thought of in high places".

He added: "It was an extraordinary episode from start to finish. It gave me the greatest concern of my professional career. I didn't believe things like that could happen."

The coroner at the inquest of 30-year-old Ana Maria Denzo, 30, from Ealing, who died at the hospital in March 2005 said "ongoing failures" and "neglect" led to her death.

Explaining why he is speaking out now, Dr Baderman said: "I had always thought you should try to put matters right by professional behaviour, discussion and negotiation. But there comes a time when there is enough wrong with our beloved health service and it needs to be put right. If patients are coming to harm that is the final line."

The Department of Health said it was now investigating the claims.

North West London Hospitals Trust chief executive Fiona Wise, who joined the trust in April 2007, said: "The report took place six years ago and different management arrangements have been in place at the Trust for some time since. Our maternity unit was lifted off special measures in September 2006 following significant and sustained improvements.

"We are committed to ensuring the best clinical care for all our patients."