Boards could face MRSA prosecutions

Hospital managers could be made legally liable for the spread of MRSA, it was reported yesterday as doctors called for tough action against the disease.

According to one report, hospital boards could be threatened with corporate manslaughter charges if they are negligent in preventing the spread of MRSA.

Health secretary John Reid has already told the Healthcare Commission that Labour would introduce legislation making boards vulnerable to the charge of corporate manslaughter.

A source close to Reid told the Sunday Times: "You can give matrons the power to close wards like the Tories are suggesting, or change cleaning companies like we do, but the buck stops with the hospital manager.

"The act would be another way of shutting all the loopholes which hospital managers use to get round spending money on cleaning."

The move came as obstetricians told how their patients were being exposed to danger by pressure on hospital beds.

Obstetricians spoke out in the BMA magazine, BMA News, after a series of reports of mothers and babies being infected.

They said there had been a number of reports of non-obstetric patients being placed on obstetric wards.

John Eddy, chairman of the BMA’s obstetrician and gynaecologists’ committee, said: "We do not know what kind of effect this will have on infection rates. My view is that it is a potential danger that is avoidable."

March 28th 2005, Staffnurse.

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