Intensive care standards questioned
The standard of intensive care in NHS hospitals has been questioned by a health watchdog.
According to the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) nearly half of all critically ill patients who died in British hospitals received sub-standard care.
It claims that in some of these cases, the standard of care may have contributed to their deaths,
The study monitored 1,677 patients admitted to NHS intensive care units in June 2003, of which 560 died.
There was only sufficient data to make a judgement on 388 of these cases, but the report found that the level of care contributed to the death of 41 of these patients.
“We cannot say that the patients who died would have survived if they had received better care – 53 per cent who died did receive good care and these were acutely ill patients,” said report co-author Dr George Findlay.
“But we definitely felt that for 41 cases, the deficiencies were significant enough to have contributed to their deaths.
“It is not good enough and the findings raise a lot of concerns about the structure of care and the management of acutely ill people.”
The report pointed to a disproportionate reliance on junior doctors and a relative lack of training in acute medicine at consultant level as part of the problem.
However NHS officials claimed that the report only offers a snapshot of care and is not reflective of the NHS as a whole.
