|
|
Labour Health Guru Accused of Care Home Neglect
By Simon Freeman, Times
January 31, 2005
Dr Chai Patel, 50, a one-time Labour benefactor who has acted as an advisor on health to Tony Blair and former health secretary Alan Milburn, faces being struck off if found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council.
Dr Patel, of Oxshott, Surrey, is accused of failing to safeguard the health, safety and welfare of elderly residents at Lynde House, in Twickenham, south-west London, in his erstwhile role as chief executive of Westminster Health Care.
It was also alleged at the hearing in central London today that Dr Patel failed to provide and maintain an environment at the house where residents received "proper standards of care".
Dr Patel is accused of failing to investigate claims in a letter sent to him that residents at the £800-a-week home were often left drenched in their own urine and that catering and general standards of care were poor.
The GMC heard that an independent report into alleged failings at the home published in 2001 found it was understaffed and under-resourced. A subsequent investigation, commissioned by the Kingston and Richmond Health Authority and published in 2002, found a catalogue of failings including a high level of falls among residents and unexplained bruising which was not investigated, the panel was told.
Personal grooming was of a poor standard with the more dependent residents looking "unkempt and dishevelled", the report into complaints in relation to 13 patients by the McLaren Consultancy found.
The report said concerns and complaints have been raised repeatedly with Westminster Health Care since 1998 by residents, relatives and friends but that "insufficient action" had been taken.
Dr Patel, who has been a Government adviser on the Department of Health's older people's taskforce and a trustee of charity Help the Aged, denies serious professional misconduct. He is seeking to have most of the charges thrown out.
His counsel, Mary O'Rourke, said the two reports into alleged failings at the home should not be admissible as evidence.
She told the panel that Dr Patel had no personal responsibility for the care of residents because he had no patient-doctor relationship with them in his role.
Healthcare was provided by NHS trusts and GPs, she said, and as chief executive of Westminster Health Care, Dr Patel was not responsible for the management of Lynde House.
"Just because he is a registered general medical practitioner can't impose upon him the responsibility of safeguarding the healthcare of residents in a nursing home," Miss O'Rourke said.
High-profile Labour Party donor Dr Patel took over as chief executive of the Priory Group after Westminster Health Care was sold in 2002.
A spokesman for his private office said today: "We don't expect to get a negative outcome.
"We very much hope that these proceedings show he is not guilty of serious professional misconduct."
Westminster has since been through a complicated chain of ownership and was bought by sporting magnates Dermot Desmond, John Magnier and J. P. McManus in October last year for £525m and merged with Barchester Healthcare to form the country's third largest provider of elderly care.
The hearing continues.
|
|
