Priory Healthcare fined for safety failings linked to death of mental patient

Care provider Priory Healthcare has been fined £650,000 after pleading guilty to a criminal safety failing linked to the death of a patient who was hit by a train after absconding from a mental health hospital.

Personal trainer Matthew Caseby, 23, was able to leave Birmingham's Priory Hospital Woodbourne after being "inappropriately unattended" for several minutes in September 2020, an inquest jury ruled in 2022.

Priory Healthcare Ltd admitted breaching the 2008 Health and Social Care Act at Birmingham Magistrates' Court on Friday, by failing to provide safe care and treatment "resulting in Matthew Caseby and other service users being exposed to a significant risk of avoidable harm".

A second charge brought under the same legislation was withdrawn.

Priory Healthcare's barrister, Paul Greaney KC, entered the guilty plea on behalf of the company.

The London-based provider, which was charged after an investigation into the death of Mr Caseby conducted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), now faces an unlimited fine.

An inquest held in April 2022 was told Mr Caseby was able to leave the hospital, where he was an NHS-funded patient, by climbing over a 2.3-metre-high courtyard fence.

The inquest jury, which heard the University of Birmingham graduate should have been under constant observation but was left unattended, reached a conclusion that death "was contributed to by neglect".

Following the verdict, Birmingham and Solihull senior coroner Louise Hunt urged health chiefs to consider imposing minimum standards for perimeter fences at acute mental health units.

Mr Caseby, who lived in London, was originally detained under the Mental Health Act following reports of a man running on to railway tracks near Oxford five days before his death.

Opening the case against Priory Healthcare at the magistrates' court hearing, CQC barrister James Marsland said other patients had absconded from the ward on previous occasions.

Mr Marsland said: "There was a courtyard (on the ward) which service users were able to access. Part of the perimeter was a fence, which at its shortest was 2.3 metres tall.

"The prosecution say that they failed to provide safe care and treatment in that they failed to properly assess the risk.

"The prosecution do not suggest that the defendant is to be sentenced on the basis that it has caused the death of Matthew."

In a victim impact statement that he read to District Judge Shamim Qureshi, Mr Caseby's father, Richard Caseby, said: "Five days before his death, Matthew had been diagnosed as suffering from a psychotic episode.

"He had lost contact with reality."

After describing his son as a sensitive, gentle and intelligent soul, Mr Caseby said that his ability to grieve had been stunted for years by Priory Healthcare's attempts to "hide the facts" about his son's death and "evade accountability for its gross failures."

Mr Caseby also told the court that the firm "had been dragged kicking and screaming" to face hard evidence of its shortcomings.

Mr Caseby said his son had died needlessly and in the aftermath, Priory Healthcare had made the family's lives "indescribably more painful".

Hear the latest news on Downtown on FM, DAB, smart speaker or the Rayo app.