Yahoo Finance Kent hospital trust fined £733,000 over failures that led to baby’s death
A hospital trust has been fined £733,000 over serious failures that led to the death of a week-old baby, in a groundbreaking prosecution brought by the NHS care regulator.
East Kent hospitals university NHS foundation trust was handed the fine at Folkestone magistrates court on Friday over lapses in how its maternity staff treated Harry Richford and his mother, Sarah.
The trust pleaded guilty in April to a charge of failing to provide safe care to Harry and his mother after she went into labour and around the time of the birth in November 2017 at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital in Margate, which resulted in them both suffering avoidable harm.
“Due to the trust not managing this risk of avoidable harm, following his birth on 2 November 2017 Harry was found to be unwell and placed into incubated care on a ventilator. However, on 9 November, seven days after his birth, Harry died,” the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said.
The trust was fined £733,000 for breaching regulation 12 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and ordered to pay a £170 victim surcharge and £28,000 of the CQC’s costs in bringing the case, meaning it has to pay a total of £761,170.
The sentencing brings to an end the first prosecution of a trust by the CQC for providing criminally inadequate standards of clinical care.
Nigel Acheson, the CQC’s deputy chief inspector of hospitals, said after the hearing: “No family should ever have to endure the pain and suffering that the Richford family have experienced. The trust’s acceptance of responsibility for the errors in Harry and Sarah’s care is welcome, but the fact remains that the series of events which led up to Harry’s death could and should have been avoided.”
While most births occurred safely, he said, “the death or injury of even one new baby or mother is one too many and something that everyone working in the health and care system must do all they can to prevent”.
At an inquest last year, the coroner Christopher Sutton-Maddocks found that Harry’s death was “contributed to by neglect”. He identified a series of blunders that led to the boy being born looking pale, not crying and in a poor state, and later dying.
Staff failed to ensure that Harry was born within 30 minutes of a cardiotachography scan showing that his heart rate was worryingly high at 2am on 2 November 2017, he said. Instead it took 92 minutes to deliver him.
At 2.05am an inexperienced locum registrar obstetrician, Dr Christos Spyroulis, tried to deliver Harry using forceps but failed. Harry was eventually born by emergency caesarean section at 3.32am but was “to all intents and purposes lifeless”.
An obstetrics expert said that if Harry had been born at 2am he would have been in a good condition and lived. The coroner said the delivery was complicated and should have been done by a consultant, whom he criticised for arriving late.
The trust is the subject of a government-ordered review of its maternity care led by Dr Bill Kirkup after it emerged that other babies died after receiving what their families said was poor care.
The trust’s boss apologised to the family. “Harry’s parents expected that they would return home with a healthy baby and we failed them. We fully acknowledge the mistakes that we made,” said Niall Dickson, the chair of the trust’s board.
He outlined improvements made to its maternity services since Harry’s death, including hiring more consultants and extending the hours a consultant is on duty at the hospital in Margate and at the trust’s William Harvey hospital in Ashford.
