Hospital notes 4 March

Patients are being put in danger because of a desperate shortage of senior doctors, a report warns today. Concerns have previously been raised that there are too few consultants working at nights and weekends with critically ill patients left in the hands of junior doctors. Now doctors have admitted their own care is ‘unsafe’ because in some cases, a single doctor is being forced to look after 30 seriously ill patients at a time.

Hospitals may be paying thousands of pounds to a private firm to cover up their patient death rates. The firm – which advises hospitals on improving overall performance – has strongly denied the claims.

As many as 1,165 people starved to death in NHS hospitals over the past four years fuelling claims nurses are too busy to feed their patients. According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics following a Freedom of Information request, for every patient who dies from malnutrition, four more have dehydration mentioned on their death certificate. So they knew. This is "healthcare" for the proles. In 2011 the number of patients discharged from hospital suffering from malnutrition doubled to 5,558. Dianne Jeffrey, chairwoman of Malnutrition Task Force, condemned the statistics. Yes, there is a Malnutrition Task Force. That's going well, isn't it.

Now seriously, if hospitals can't be trusted to do something as basic as feed patients properly, there's something far wrong. Setting up a task force doesn't begin to cut it. Imagine the row there would be if just a few jailbirds were released malnourished! But we are talking here about blameless, sick people who have paid for this service through their taxes.

Doesn't it occur to somebody that the hospital service is unmanageable?

If it can be managed, the present lot are making a lethal mess of it.