Rotherham NHS Trust fined £200,000 after exposing babies to 'serious risk'

The Trust, which runs Rotherham General Hospital, had been repeatedly warned by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) about problems with its safeguarding training and other systemic deficiencies before the four youngsters’ multiple admissions between January 2019 and February 2020, Sheffield Magistrates Court heard.

On Wednesday, District Judge Naomi Redhouse imposed the £200,000 fine stressing that the case was about failures in the systems and processes of the hospital trust and not those of individual doctors and nurses working under “immense pressure”.

Ms Redhouse said she calculated the figure for the fine taking into account the financial pressures the trust and the wider NHS was under and she also accepted that the prosecution by the CQC was based on the harm children had been exposed to rather than any evidence of actual harm as a result of the hospital’s actions.

The trust earlier admitted a charge that it exposed service users to “a serious risk of avoidable harm”.

The court was told how one eight-day-old baby was brought into the hospital on December 23 2019, suffering from breathing difficulties and bleeding from their nose and mouth. It was only on the fifth visit to hospital – after a GP raised concerns – that a child safety examination took place revealing rib and leg fractures that were deemed non-accidental.

And the district judge heard how a month-old baby brought in with a mouth injury on January 20 2019 was on a child protection plan but this was not spotted by the paediatric nurse who examined the youngster. This child was twice released from hospital with no safeguarding concerns before a scan and other examinations revealed multiple fractures, the court heard.

Eleanor Sanderson, for the trust, said: “The trust wishes to express to the court its deep regret for the circumstances which gave rise to these offences and the risk posted to those who required safeguarding. The trust accepts that its systems and processes were not operating effectively and not sufficiently embedded.”

The barrister asked the district judge to take into account the “truly challenging” circumstances the hospital was operating in at the moment when assessing the level of the fine. She told the court: “A fine will further reduce funds available for direct patient care.”

Judge Redhouse acknowledged the trust had worked hard to improve all these matters, replacing most of the senior executive posts, including the chief executive. But she said: “These were serious failures and there is no question that these issues had been part of previous inspections. The attempt to deal with them was simply not enough.”

Sarah Dronsfield, CQC head of hospital inspection, said: “These young children were let down by The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust’s lack of good policies and processes around safeguarding, which sadly in this case has had very real-world consequences for them.

“Anyone using health and social care services should have the right to be seen by staff with the right training, who have the right processes in place, to keep them safe. This was not the case at Rotherham General Hospital.”