Weston Hospital.
Hospital forced to reveal botched op figure
Report by Tom Wright , Reporter
Thursday, May 3, 2012
12:30 PM
WESTON Area Health Trust has been forced to reveal how many people have had surgery on the wrong part of their body following an eight-month battle with the Mercury.
The NHS trust refused to disclose how many patients had received botched operations since 2001, claiming the number was so small it would compromise patient confidentiality.
A subsequent appeal against the Freedom of Information decision was also turned down by the trust despite repeated intentions to preserve anonymity.
But after appealing to the Information Commissioner, the watchdog found in favour of the Mercury amid criticisms of double-standards.
As reported last year, Weston General Hospital has only suffered one MRSA case in the past 18 months – a fact widely publicised by the trust.
The trust revealed one patient suffered a wrong site surgery last year – the only one in the past decade.
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3 comments
To clarify the trust refused to disclose the matter when we asked them directly. We were aware of the 2011 incident and wanted to know if this was an isolated case or not. Its refusal meant we had to submit a Freedom of Information request to establish whether it was a one-off or a wider problem. Thankfully it was an isolated case. 'Taxpayers money and public servants time' could have been saved if the trust had told us on the first occasion, upon the initial FoI request or upon us appealing to them to reverse their decision. Their stance meant we called in the Information Commissioner. We will not apologise for trying to establish facts in the public interest that appeared to be kept hidden for no legitimate reason.
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Tom Wright
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Well after all that we still don't know what was chopped off in error.
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T-Bone
Thursday, May 3, 2012
You know I'm surprised this didn't end with: are you the person who suffered an operation on the wrong body part, why not send a pic area to our readers picture site? Grow up Mercury, you've managed to waste taxpayers money and public servants time to get the number 1. Yes I can see why since it is a single person that response would have made it very easy to identify the individual.
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Maxwell
Thursday, May 3, 2012