Queen's Hospital Burton fined £200k after patient fell and died

Peter Mullis died after he absconded from the hospital for the third time

A hospital has been fined £200,000 for failing to look after a dementia patient who absconded and died.

Peter Mullis slipped down a bank and hit his head on concrete at the Queen's Hospital in Burton.

It was the third time he had left the hospital in July 2019 - despite staff being told that he was a bit of an "escape artist".

University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Trust said it accepted the findings and had made improvements.

It pleaded guilty to being a care provider that exposed a patient to a significant risk of avoidable harm in its first criminal prosecution.

Mr Khokhar, prosecuting on behalf of the Care Quality Commission, said Mr Mullis was transferred to the hospital after becoming unresponsive at his specialist care home.

While on the ward he fled towards the exit and when two nurses chased him, he threatened to punch them if they came near.

Mr Mullis climbed over a 3ft (1m) barrier onto a grass verge, on top of an embankment and shouted: "You are not going to stop me".

He ran down the slope but lost his balance and fell onto the pavement. The patient was flown by air ambulance to Royal Stoke University Hospital but died later that day.

Mr Khokhar said that the CQC believed there was a "catalogue of failures" which contributed to Mr Mullis's "avoidable death", including insufficient staff training and limited policies on how to deal with missing patients.

The hospital trust was fined

His daughter Selina Kendrick said nearly four years on, his death was still raw and blamed "inadequate levels of training".

"I feel I have been robbed of getting to know my dad again," she said in a statement read to court.

"It was basic safeguarding."

Trust barrister Eleanor Sanderson said in mitigation that given the slope had been used as a walk way, the fall was tragic, but death had been unlikely.

Fining the trust £200,000, District Judge Jon Taffe accepted that it was £6.9m in debt and under significant staffing pressure.

"I have considerable sympathy for hard working staff at the trust trying their best," he said.

"Some systems in place were not adhered to sufficiently."

Mr Mullis's family attended the sentencing at Derby Magistrates Court

Garry Marsh, executive chief nurse for the trust, said: "We remain incredibly sorry for what happened to Mr Mullis, and our sincere condolences continue to be with his family.

"Mr Mullis was supervised during his time in our care, but it is clear that improvements were needed to how some of our polices, there to keep people like Mr Mullis safe, were put into practice and we fully accept the CQC's findings.

"Since this sad incident in 2019 we have created a dedicated Mental Capacity Act education team to better support and train our staff, and introduced a new auditing process to track compliance against best practice.

"We remain absolutely committed to improving further to ensure that we provide the safest care and treatment to all patients in our care."

The hospital has put a wooden fence in the outdoor area where the fall happened and all ward doors have a button that must be pressed by staff, visitors or a patient in order to exit the ward.