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Hygiene inspectors found stained mattresses, dirty commodes and unwashed drip-stands at one of London's top hospitals.
King's College Hospital in Camberwell is failing to protect patients from catching superbugs and other infections, a Care Quality Commission report said. The watchdog has placed the hospital under "closer scrutiny" and will send more inspectors on surprise visits.
Inspectors visited three times in May and June and judged the hospital to be failing on six out of 17 measures.
The report said: "We found a range of patient equipment in each area that was contaminated."
A spokesman for the hospital said since the inspections the hospital has already replaced 940 mattresses and increased the frequency of cleaning.
Reader views (2)
Basically the tax-payers now have to buy new equipment because the old stuff wasn't properly looked after and has degraded: if that happened in a private company, do you think they'd get the sack? Having been involved in providing services to hospitals in another country, we tried to tender for work in the NHS in several Healthcare Trusts, but it was utterly impossible to make progress: the entire system is given over to petty empire-building bureaucrats who prefer to pick lousy service-providers because they are then dependent on their NHS boss for the continued work (they'd lose it in the private sector!). Their main aim is to block progress in case it means empowering a rival bureaucrat. They take months or even years over the most basic and obvious decisions to save costs (like not allowing kit to degrade in the first place) and usually their decision involves continuing as they are. Most of the NHS managers are third-rate and I regret to say worse educated and less capable then their counterparts in places which can be deemed Third World. That's it folks: I can positively assert that there are hospitals in Africa which are better run than those in the UK and on a fraction of the budget.
This is a result of over-centralisation of government: when people provided services for the community in which they lived they did a good job because they'd soon hear their neighbours displeasure if they didn't. Nowadays there is no comeback: why bother to do a good job?
- Roz, France, 28/07/2009 10:33
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Can someone tell me, do the Kitchens still get flooded out in the winter?
- Mr S.Port, London, 27/07/2009 12:37
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