Damned NHS boss gets his comeuppance

HeaLth boss Clive Uren has quit after a damning report into the way his hospital was run. And a good job too.

The Argus was taken to task in April by Mr Uren when we reported the death of Pauline Freeman at Eastbourne

District General Hospital.

We said that she bled to death following routine surgery after being placed in an under-staffed ward.

Mr Uren, chief executive of the hospital trust, whinged that the death was caused by complications following the operation and not because of a shortage of nursing staff.

But as we pointed out at the time, the ward had only one qualified nurse and no one noticed that the patient was haemorrhaging.

That wasn't the first case of incompetence discovered at this hospital following an inquest.

When 85-year-old Marjorie Dyer choked to death on her lunch, nurses failed to revive her after mixing up her notes with those of another patient.

The report found, not surprisingly, that there had been ineffective management of serious incident and complaints.

But that was only the tip of the iceberg. It also concluded that there was serious concern and lack of confidence in the way the Trust was run, and that had damaged the reputation of the NHS in Eastbourne.

Staff lost all confidence in Mr Uren and his team, finding them unwilling to listen or accept that problems existed.

The management didn't even bother to make a report to the trust's board until there had been extensive media coverage into the deaths, or tell the health authority about them.

After such a damning report, Mr Uren had no option but to quit along with chairman John Barkshire.

This jumped up pipsqueak has got his comeuppance at last. He was nitpicking over details of our coverage when he should have been looking at serious shortcomings in the way the hospital was run.

Now he has been replaced in the short term with Worthing Hospital chief executive Alan Randall who has a proven record of efficient management and good staff relations.

It will take all his skills and those of new trust chairman Anne Bolter to get Eastbourne Hospital out of the mess left by Mr Uren and his team.

Sadly, no one can bring back the two women who died. But their relatives can feel satisfied that Mr Uren has gone and every effort is being taken to ensure deaths like these do not happen again.

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