Fiddling fatality figures

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FIDDLES, fraud and the falsification of official records are fearlessly exposed in the "popular" press when it involves railway workers. Is it too much to hope that they will devote similar space and screaming headlines to the exposure of such abuse in the Health Service?

The Medical Practitioners Union section of ASTMS has launched a campaign against corruption in the NHS. National Officer Reg Bird claims:

"Over the last 12 months OUI members have been flooding us with cases of growing abuse of NHS facilities by consultants who are involved with private health practices. The main area of concern is over consultants using NHS facilities like pathology labs without paying for the services as they must do by law."

He also claims evidence that consultants are putting private patients into NHS beds, thus charging twice, one from the private patient and again from the NHS.

Even more alarming abuses are alleged by trade unionists in the ambulance service. A group of GMWU ambulance men and women in Cardiff are calling on the Health Authority to investiwhich education authorities gate falsification by ambulance officers to cover up for staff shortages.

Emergency calls are supposed to be entered on a form and stamped with the time at which they are received , but it is alieged that officers at the ambul ance control centre are not time-stamping the forms until an ambulance is free to go to the emergency.

Delays of up to 20 minutes (which could easily prove fatal) therefore do not show up on the records.

The union had previously pressed for increased staff, as there were only eight ambulances, as a maximum, for emergency cover for the whole of South Glamorgan, including Cardiff. Their calls for extra crews were rejected because management claimed their records showed the service was satisfactory, despite union claims that serious delays were building up.

If the records themselves are fiddled that would explain why Aneus baude