TV revelations prompt health bosses’ summit

Rochdale Infirmary

NHS chiefs are set to meet hospital leaders following an undercover TV ‘Dispatches” documentary.

The meeting will seek to assure NHS Oldham chiefs that all patients treated in Pennine Acute Trust’s four hospitals, which includes the Rochdale Infirmary, are receiving good-quality care.

NHS Oldham is responsible for commissioning services from Pennine Acute on behalf of Oldham, Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, Bury and Manchester primary care trusts.

Shauna Dixon, chief executive of NHS Oldham, said: “We must satisfy ourselves that the Trust is taking action to make sure all their patients are receiving the good-quality care to which they have an absolute right.

“We have been in regular contact with Pennine Acute and will be meeting with them very soon to discuss the work which is under way.”

The action follows a hard-hitting “Dispatches” documentary which saw reporters posing as a porter and a trust volunteer secretly filming patient care and hospital life including conversations with and between members of staff mainly at North Manchester General and also the Royal Oldham Hospital between December 13 and March 4.

The undercover Channel 4 reporters said they had witnessed caring staff, but the programme branded Pennine Acute Trust, which runs the hospitals in Rochdale, Oldham, North Manchester and Bury, as “struggling to care for patients.”

Two members of staff at North Manchester General Hospital are reported to have since been suspended.

Pennine Acute said it was unable to discuss ongoing internal disciplinary matters but investigations were progressing swiftly.

Ms Dixon said: “The behaviour of some staff and the treatment of some of the patients shown during the Dispatches programme was entirely unacceptable. Pennine Acute assured us that this would be dealt with as a matter of urgency.”

Pennine Acute’s chief executive, John Saxby, said the programme highlighted some of the pressures on staff, and pledged to work with primary care trusts to reduce the number of patients going in.