Families Take Legal Action over Care at Yorkshire Heart Unit
Nine families whose children were treated at the Yorkshire Children's Heart Surgery Unit in Leeds are taking legal action against the NHS Trust that runs it.
It's after the parents of a York schoolboy who died after having surgery there, received an apology from health bosses, and compensation. Cardiac experts found that errors were made in the decision making process during Bradley Brough's treatment and that the 11 year old's care “fell below acceptable standards on several occasions”. Bradley was born with a congenital heart defect and needed an operation to divert the flow of blood. Following three operations within two days, the schoolboy suffered a bleed on the brain and died. The whole unit came under fire for "confused messages" over his treatment. Bradley's parents Kevin and Sharon Brough, from Upper Poppleton, have now received a pay out from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. The surgeon who did Bradley's operation, Nihal Weerasena, hasn't performed any surgery since March 2013 under a voluntary agreement and is under investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC). Operations at the unit were suspended for more than a week back in 2013 following concerns over mortality rates but a series of reviews concluded that the centre is safe. Yvette Oade, Chief Medical Officer for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "On behalf of the trust I want to apologise to Mr and Mrs Brough for the distress and anguish caused by Bradley's tragic death and the errors that were made during his last surgical treatment. "Lessons from Bradley's death have been learned by the clinical team and changes have been put in place as a result. I can confirm a settlement has now been reached with Bradley's family, and once again would like to stress our sincere condolences to them." In reference to the reviews into the general safety of the unit, Dr Oade said: "A number of recommendations were made about ways in which we could improve the service further and already significant progress has been made in implementing these across the unit. "The trust has previously apologised to the small number of families where care and support were not to our usual high standards. We have made significant changes to our services to improve this experience and ensure we are as supportive as possible during such a difficult time.'' He told us: "If there's a common complaint of these families, they feel that the unit up in Leeds was really concentrating more on keeping their status than on actually looking at what had gone wrong with their children. "Clearly there's been lots of brilliant successes by the team in Leeds but I think a good heart unit has to look at the failings when they do have problems so that they can address any problems and make sure that lessons are learned. "These families feel they've been coming against a brick wall in getting straight forward answers so they have little choice really but to go along the litigation route. Almost without exception, that's the only time that parents can get at the truth." When asked whether compensation was an motivational factor for the families, Laurence told us: "What these families who've lost children want, is to find out what's happened and why. They're certainly not doing it for the compensation. “In cases where children have survived but have suffered injury and disability, well there the families haven't really got any choice but to seek compensation to help them with the child’s lifetime needs. "So it's a fair cross section of families, but they're all just seeking answers."