Hospitals superbug failures probed

LONDON (Reuters) - Appalling hygiene, a shortage of nursing and unacceptable management contributed to outbreaks of a hospital superbug that killed about 90 patients in southeast England, a damning report said on Thursday.

Media reports said police and the Health and Safety Executive were examining the findings of the Healthcare Commission report to see if criminal charges were appropriate against the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.

The commission found that on several occasions nurses had told patients to "go in their beds" rather than helping patients with diarrhoea to get to a commode or bathroom. Some patients were left for hours in wet or soiled sheets.

Patients with the bug, C. difficile, were moved between wards and trust managers had failed to set up a special isolation areas for them. The watchdog blamed a focus on meeting government targets for emergency admissions.

"It took four months to establish an isolation ward exclusively for patients with C. difficile. In our view this was partly because of the pressure on beds and the trust's desire to meet targets," the report said.

The bacterium, commonly transmitted while patients are in the hospital, most often affects those with weak immune systems and the elderly. Figures show cases of the potentially lethal bug in hospitals are on the rise.

The Commission, which described the events at the Maidstone, Kent and Sussex, and Pembury Hospitals as a tragedy, said there had been 1,176 cases of C. difficile during outbreaks between 2004 and 2006.

It estimated about 90 patients had died as a result.

"The clinical management of C. difficile infection in the majority of the patients fell short of an acceptable standard in at least one aspect of basic care," the report said.