Sandy 4 St Albans » West Herts Hospital Trust http://sandy4stalbans.org/blog Sandy Walkington campaigns with the Liberal Democrats across St Albans Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:29:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 From cradle to grave? http://sandy4stalbans.org/blog/2010/01/19/from-cradle-to-grave/ http://sandy4stalbans.org/blog/2010/01/19/from-cradle-to-grave/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:51:05 +0000 sandy http://sandy4stalbans.org/blog/?p=1285 The NHS has always boasted of caring for people from cradle to grave – but cremation is clearly different.  None of us is at our best at a time of bereavement – we’re certainly not looking at the small print.  So I share LibDem MP Norman Lamb’s astonishment that doctors working in hospitals earned almost £15m last year in so called ‘ash cash’ payments made by grieving families. The payment is made to doctors to sign a form releasing a body for cremation.

In our West Hertfordshire Hospital Trust area, families paid out £148,218 in 2008/9 alone to get their deceased loved ones’ bodies released for cremation.

It may be “a long established practice” but but it’s hard to justify taking money off grieving relatives when this involves nothing beyond most doctors normal working hours.  Two separate doctors have to sign forms and get paid £73-50 for each one.  Because the undertaker normally pays and then includes the fee in his overall charges,  the practice is not very visible but that does not make it any more palatable.

“Ash cash” is a Dickensian relic of past times and the Government should take action to put an end to this unjustifiable practice as soon as possible.

PS Norman Lamb is coming to St Albans this week to speak at a public meeting on the future of the NHS.  For details see my previous blog entry

]]> http://sandy4stalbans.org/blog/2010/01/19/from-cradle-to-grave/feed/ 0 What does a body lying undiscovered for three days tell us about Watford Hospital? http://sandy4stalbans.org/blog/2009/05/10/what-does-a-body-lying-undiscovered-for-three-days-tell-us-about-watford-hospital/ http://sandy4stalbans.org/blog/2009/05/10/what-does-a-body-lying-undiscovered-for-three-days-tell-us-about-watford-hospital/#comments Sun, 10 May 2009 22:27:19 +0000 sandy http://sandy4stalbans.org/wordpress/?p=610 It is perfectly disgusting that a young man’s body could remain undiscovered for three days in Watford Hospital. This is of course the main acute hospital for everyone in St Albans after the government closed down most of the departments at St Albans City Hospital and then reneged on its promise to build a new super-hospital at Hatfield.

The body was found in a toilet. Allegedly it had an out-of-order notice on the door. But it is still difficult to comprehend that a proper cleaning regime would not have exposed the tragedy much sooner

West Hertfordshire Hospital Trust is rightly holding an inquiry into the case. The results of the inquiry must be made public, in order to reassure patients and their families that processes have been changed, and to reassure the public that this could never happen again.

Sal Brinton, my fellow Liberal Democrat candidate in Watford has been campaigning for years for improvements to be made in the running of the hospital for the sake of everyone in West Herts.

Sal has posed the following questions, in light of the most recent Healthcare Commission Healthcheck report on West Herts Hospital Trust in 2008:

1. What monitoring was in place for a patient in distress, and what arrangements were made to search the hospital for him after he disappeared?
(Healthcare Commission report 2007/8:
C20a: safe, secure environment: Insufficiently Met
C20b: privacy and confidentiality: Poor
National indicator: experience of patients rated Poor)

2. What arrangements were in place for cleaning the toilets, for a body not to be discovered for this length of time?
C21: Clean, well designed environment: Compliant (but not met in 2005/6)
National indicators: C. Dif and MRSA targets: not met

Residents of West Hertfordshire deserve to know what happened as a matter of urgency.

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