UPDATED: A 2-day inquest into the death of an East Cowes man has this week revealed shocking details that a clerk at St Mary’s Hospital purposefully cancelled patient’s appointments to skew waiting times statistics.
The Isle of Wight NHS Trust is continuing to investigate over 3,000 patient records to ascertain if 26-year-old Holly Pritchett changed endoscopy examination appointments for more than the 17 patients already known about.
The incidents took place during 2015 and 2016 but have only just come to light as part of the inquest into the death of 64-year-old John Fisher, as reported by the BBC.
Mr Fisher died at his home almost 2 years ago as the result of an alcohol-related condition. Although the rigged appointments didn’t directly lead to Mr Fisher’s death, they could have done according to Coroner for the Isle of Wight, Caroline Sumeray.
The inquest, held in Newport, has this week heard how Mr Fisher’s internal bleeding wasn’t checked as important endoscopy appointments were cancelled some 4 times – 2 of those appointments were purposefully cancelled by Ms Pritchett to fix waiting time statistics.
Ms Pritchett has defended herself saying that she is not the monster she has been portrayed to be. The clerk has since been dismissed from the Trust, who say that extra measures have now been put in place for appointing booking and monitoring.
The coroner has described Ms Pritchett has having ‘immaturity’ and ‘lack of worldliness’, which may have made her feel under pressure. Holly says that she was repeatedly told that if she ‘breached any one’ she ‘would lose her job’, but line manager Rachel Westerman has denied telling her that breaches would not be tolerated.
3 people have suffered extended symptoms as a result of the cancelled appointments and 2 patients have died, but their deaths haven’t been attributable to the delayed appointments.
Mr Fisher died as a result of an alcohol-related condition, Ms Sumeray has concluded.
UPDATE THURSDAY – In a statement, Barbara Stuttle, Chief Nurse at Isle of Wight NHS Trust has said:
“I want to extend our sympathies to Mr Fisher’s family and friends. This was a complex issue which has, as the Coroner recognised, been carefully and fully investigated.
“As was widely reported in 2016 we reviewed the records of over 3,000 patients and in a number of cases made contact with patients to review their care. This was due to the inappropriate actions of one member of staff who was subsequently dismissed.
“We have strengthened our appointment booking and monitoring systems as a result of the investigation.”
“The Trust is aware of some comments circulating on Social Media and would like to make the following points clear:
“It is clear from the comprehensive investigation undertaken that our former employee falsified the records and this is the reason she was dismissed. Whilst NHS staff work under pressure that is no reason for records to be falsified.
“We do not believe that undue pressure was placed on our former employee. We have a zero tolerance policy towards bullying and threatening behaviour.
“At the time that we undertook the exercise to review over 3,000 patient records we could not be specific about the reason for undertaking the review because that would have been unfair on our former employee. We were however open and transparent at the time about the review being undertaken.”
Back in September 2016, the Isle of Wight NHS Trust did not explain fully why they were investigating patient records.
Source: BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight
