Averil's death .... Roulette with patients' lives and why bad news is burried £££
Nic Hart
As an inpatient, Averil's care within Addenbrooke's hospital was expensive to the NHS, with intensive one to one care.
Shortage of inpatient beds means that it is all too easy for there to be considerable pressure for patients to be discharged far too early into outpatient services in the community in order to save costs.
A game of roulette with patient's lives.
In Averil's case she was discharged into a disorganised and chaotic outpatient community service (NCEDS), where a single inexperienced trainee psychologist saw Averil every couple of weeks, with no cover even for holiday periods when the trainee was away.
In this high risk strategy, the NHS stands to save money.
All too often, sadly this is at the expense of the patient, who may lose out in many ways; especially in the quality of care that they recieve.
With a toxic mix at NCEDS of extremely poor supervision and lack of experience, this cost saving excercise is a recipe that can lead to the tragic death of a young patient and I beleive this is exactly what happened in Averil's case.
Even Averil's cleaner at University knew more about Averil's health than the consultants and team looking after her.
The community service contract (NCEDS) is up for renewal in 2014.
NCEDS are determined to hide the bad news of Averil's tragedy in their attempt to regain the contract for community care worth around £3,500,000.
In order to do this, they have delayed every request for information that we have made (sometimes for as long as five months). It seems that they hope that Averil's case will remain buried in red tape until after the bidding process and that once they have regained the valuable contract, no one will care.
Is this the new "open and honest" NHS that we have been promised ?
I see no signs of change.
Nic 11/08/2014