Since March I have been asking the chief executive of York NHS Trust to give me some information, under the Code On Openness in the NHS, about the mortality rate of patients waiting for heart treatment.
He selectively claimed improvements in waiting times (in an article in the Press last April) through his Director of Performance Manage-ment.
Research by the King's Fund, examined in Panorama, says that waiting-time claims are improved by, for example, weeding out the names of those who have died while waiting, and by moving people from one list to another, and that less people were actually treated in 2000.
For example in Bristol 15 'waiting' heart patients died last year, and others were sent to London, so reducing numbers on the waiting lists.
York's chief executive has repeatedly failed to provide information about waiting list deaths or given me any valid reason under the terms of the code for his failure. If these deaths are not being recorded, why not? Where is the accountability of the executive, by whom are they paid and what use are 'performance managers'?
John Simpson,
Geldof Road, York.
Updated: 11:03 Thursday, June 21, 2001
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