30 April 2014
NHS Trust sentenced after tragic death
Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust has been fined £200,000 and ordered to pay £27,000 prosecution costs over the death of Gillian Astbury, a Type 1 diabetic admitted to the hospital in 2007. Sentencing the Trust at Stafford Crown Court, Mr Justice Haddon-Cave said her death had been “wholly avoidable and tragic”. There was a “systemic failure” of the two most basic tenets of patient care, “proper handovers between nursing shifts and proper record-keeping”, he said.
There had been a “chronic shortage of nurses throughout the hospital” and responsibility “lay firmly at the door of management at the
highest level”.
