The private company that hired a foreign doctor who accidentally killed a patient on his first UK shift as a locum has had an NHS contract terminated early due to new safety concerns.
Checks on Take Care Now by the national NHS safety watchdog and the NHS in Cambridgeshire have added to their unease about its ability to fill shifts and organise cover for weekend and evening GP services.
Health chiefs in the county have arranged for a local doctors‘ co-operative, Camdoc, to replace TCN in east Cambridgeshire and Fenland from 1 December pending a decision on round-the-clock care in the county. They had already served notice of a shakeup for services by four providers next April.
TCN’s problems over unfilled shifts were revealed last month in an interim report by the Care Quality Commission, which is investigating the case of Daniel Ubani, who killed David Gray, 70, with a painkiller overdose in 2008 in Manea, Cambridgeshire. The Department of Health was so worried by the interim findings that it ordered all 152 NHS organisations responsible for overnight and weekend care to review patient safety.
Further checks conducted after the interim findings were ready for publication have deepened concerns over TCN.
TCN says it uses other staff, including emergency care practitioners or nurses, to cover gaps, and that much of the argument is over the way providers fulfil contracts. Insisting on having health staff in certain local bases is not the best use of resources nor the best indicator of care, it says.
Read more at The Guardian.
Tags: Out-of-hours
