On 23rd March 2015 Bob wrote to Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, about the ongoing problems with the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH). He was concerned because it appears that the PRUH is once again experiencing real operating problems when he thought matters were largely fixed last year.
In September 2014 he was greatly re-assured on that matter by the fact that Kings College University Trust told the Health Scrutiny Committee of Bromley Council that everything was proceeding to plan. He assumed that to mean spending was under control and recruitment of nursing staff was on target. It is now clear that this is not the case. In his letter Bob highlighted two problems in particular.
Firstly, there remain major concerns in some clinical care areas which he understand the CQC are to investigate by sending in an amazing number of inspectors, as many as fifty, on 16-17th April 2015.
Secondly, at the same time Monitor is investigating the management of the PRUH as it seems the hospital’s debts are mounting up once again at the rate of between £4-5 million a month. He understands that by the end of March 2015 the new total debt will be over £40 million. Considering that the Health Secretary himself effectively wiped out the PRUH’s previous debts in 2014 this seems to be an appalling failure.
It seems that Kings College University Trust may well have grossly under-estimated the cultural and management changes required by the PRUH but regardless something seems to be going badly wrong.
In summary Bob asked the Health Secretary to give his views on what has happened at the PRUH and how the Department of Health expects to fix this appalling situation.