NHS rehires boss it paid off over 33 bug deaths

Ruth Harrison got £140,000 when she left Stoke Mandeville hospital where 33 patients died amid shocking hygiene standards.

She quit her post as chief executive of Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS trust in 2006 - one day before a report cited serious faults in its leadership. Now she is a consultant to Epsom and St Helier hospital in Surrey and the local primary care trusts. She will get £50,000 to lead a review into child and maternity services that could see wards closed.

Health campaigners reacted angrily to the appointment. A spokesman for the Patients' Association said: "Ms Harrison left Stoke Mandeville at a time when infection rates were so high that it led to avoidable deaths. She then got a huge pay-off and a year to enjoy it. Now we hear she is back again advising the NHS on best practice. It absolutely beggars belief."

Epsom MP Chris Grayling said: "At the very least, this is a highly insensitive appointment." The report on Stoke Mandeville accused managers of "significant failings" after they compromised patient safety by failing to listen to their own experts.

In a two-year period when Ms Harrison was leading the trust, at least 33 patients died from the stomach bug Clostridium difficile and 334 became seriously ill.

Healthcare Commission inspectors later wrote: "[We] consider there were significant failings on the part of the leadership at the trust and have recommended that the leadership change."

Health bosses today defended the decision to ask Ms Harrison's management consultancy Durrow to lead a shake-up of hospital services in Surrey.

Simon Morgan, a spokesman for the Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust, said: "Following a competitive tendering process, specialist health management consultancy Durrow has been hired to manage a review of women's and children's services."

Before Ms Harrison joined Buckinghamshire, she was chief executive at Worcestershire Acute Trust where she oversaw the downgrading of Kidderminster hospital. Public outrage at the plans led to Dr Richard Taylor, who led opposition to the move, being elected as an independent MP.

Meanwhile, former chief executive Rose Gibb is fighting to keep a £150,000 severance payment - which Health Secretary Alan Johnson tried to block - despite overseeing Britain's worst superbug outbreak at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.

At least 90 patients died as a direct result of C.diff and hundreds more were infected between 2004 and 2006 as nurses told some patients to "go in their beds".

Ms Gibb left the trust last year but has since set up a consultancy with her partner, Mark Rees, selling advice to the NHS.