Addenbrooke's Hospital ex-chief says CQC assessment 'wrong'

The NHS trust which runs Addenbrooke's Hospital has a deficit of about £1.2m a week

The former boss of an NHS hospital who stepped down days before inspectors are expected to criticise its financial management has defended its results.

Dr Keith McNeil left Addenbrooke's in Cambridge this week with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) likely to rate it as "inadequate" on 22 September.

Paul James, chief finance officer at the hospital which is running a deficit of £1.2m a week, has also left.

Addenbrooke's was "phenomenal", said Dr McNeil. The CQC has not commented.

"Everywhere across the country people would be very envious of the sort of results we get day in day out," he said.

"People's lives are saved every day by that hospital. I cannot see why anybody would want to describe it as inadequate."

Asked whether the assessment by the CQC, which has not been officially disclosed, was wrong, he told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire: "I believe so."

Dr Keith McNeil said the hospital faced "a number of very serious challenges"

Dr McNeil was appointed chief executive in November 2012 but stepped down on Monday along with Mr James.

He told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire he did not think there was "any sane or rational interpretation of the word 'inadequate'" that would describe any aspect of the operations at Addenbrooke's.

The hospital faced criticism for last year implementing the £200m e-hospital system which holds electronic copies of patient records.

But Dr McNeil denied the system was a mistake.

"It was absolutely the right thing to do," he said. "We now have an integrated electronic health record that is really starting to show its value across the hospital as familiarisation improves and as we customise it.

"The whole e-hospital program is expensive, but putting that in context that's not much less than we would have had to have spent to keep a broken system running over the next 10 years."