Just a little over a week ago, Healthcare Horserace brought to you the extraordinary stories of two Canadian women, Cheryl Baxter and Lindsay McCreith, both of whom had serious health afflictions – one with brain cancer, the other with a bad hip that left her in excruciating pain – and were refused proper attention from their country’s socialized medical program. Ultimately, both of these women had to spend thousands of their hard earned money to travel to America in order to receive the treatments necessary to survive. Now we report to you two brand new socialized medical horror stories, this time from across the pond, in the United Kingdom.
The first story is about an eighty-year-old East Sussex woman named Hazel Fenton who, nine months ago, was admitted to Conquest hospital with a case of pneumonia. Shortly thereafter, however, medical officials made the decision to take her off her antibiotics and deny her artificial feeding, choosing, essentially, to starve the woman to death, believing her to have only days left to live. The old woman was placed on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) plan, which, according to health officials, is suppose to ease the last days of dying patients. And while the program is intended strictly for terminally ill patients who only have days left to live, Times Online reports that “it is being used more widely in the NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying,” like Hazel Fenton.
Hazel’s daughter, forty-two year old Christine Ball, “had to fight hospital staff for weeks before her mother was taken off the plan and given artificial feeding.” Thankfully, she was successful in her effort. Christine Bell’s perception of the LCP and the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, however, is forever tainted. She views the LCP as nothing more then a “subterfuge for legalised [sic] euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS.” And she is not the only one who views the situation as such. Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in palliative medicine, fears that “as they are spreading out across the country, the training is getting probably more and more diluted,” resulting in many individuals who might be able to recover being left to die.
The other tragic story concerns thirty-one year old Matthew Millington, who, after joining the army at the age of sixteen, rose to the rank of corporal in the Queen’s Royal Lancers. In December 2005, he was diagnosed with a lung illness that required a double-lung transplant in order to survive. He died in his home in Brown Lees ten months after receiving that life saving surgery after it was discovered that the organs implanted in him were “from a donor who is believed to have smoked between 30 and 50 roll-up cigarettes a day,” according to The Telegraph.
An investigation conducted at Papworth Hospital, in Cambridge, following his death found several unnerving problems, among them issues of communication, record-keeping and patient handover. It was discovered that a radiographer had failed to highlight the growth of a cancerous tumor. The lack of communication between the radiographer and the consultants allowed the tumor to grow unnoticed for two whole months. What is worse is that the immunosuppressive drugs doctors had Mr. Millington on to prevent his body from rejecting the organs helped accelerate the growth of the tumor in his new lungs.
Of course, there is no information in the article to indicate the radiographer was, or ever will be, disciplined. The authors of this article do not even bother to ask why there is no investigation into why the lungs of a man who was clearly an aggressive smoker were accepted as suitable organs in the first place.
Tags: Hazel Fenton, LCP, Liverpool Care Pathway, Matthew Millington, National Health Service, NHS, socialized medicine, The Telegraph, Times Online, United Kingdom
