"I must confess to being more than a tad surprised and disappointed in the condition of the hospital, both from a hygiene point of view as well as a laundry condition.
"Putting it mildly, the hospital was filthy. If my hospital was even a shade near to the condition of this one I would be fired! When we were there, it was about 3.30pm on Friday afternoon and I did not see one housekeeper or cleaner - the cleaners' closet had a self-adhesive sticker with the contractor's name attached to the door.
"I am truly amazed as to how the hospital management can accept such poor conditions and how the contractor is able to get away with it. Nobody seems to care. What has happened to good old fashioned cleanliness and hygiene?
"Are all hospitals like this, or did I just happen to venture upon the worst hospital in the country? Quite frankly, if you have not got an infection when you enter the hospital you certainly will by the time you leave!
"As to the quality of the staff and the way they are dressed, I have never seen anything quite so appalling in my life. I have Phillipinos, Eritreans and Sudanese, all allegedly 'third world' employees and they are a darn-sight more caring about their appearance and general conduct.
"If you can find out the names of the responsible people for me at the contractor and the local NHS I shall take great delight in writing to them to let them know what I think."
Norman Gill responds:
Interesting comments you make about the hospital [you visited]. I am not surprised. I suspect, sadly, that the conditions you refer to are not uncommon elsewhere.
Problem is, you get what you pay for and this is coupled with a lack of balls on the part of management to tackle contractors - or even to attempt anything but a half-hearted 'tick-box' monitoring form. This is usually carried out by some unfortunate who knows nothing about the service requirements anyway, and who in any event is not going to put his head over the parapet and report self-evident deficiencies to senior management.
Such time-serving persons want their career check-sheet covered with the right ticket punches and without any black marks or a reputation for, God preserve us, actually tackling an issue, or worse, making a decision. You do not have to look much further to understand the deterioration and lack of standards in the modern NHS.
The current crop of politicians constantly tell us how well they are doing, pumping cash into the NHS. But if nobody manages or monitors the service provision effectively, is it any wonder that the housekeeping, laundry and linen services, facilities and other non-core activities should be at such a low standard? I am taking an extreme view here. Realistically, many hospitals and services, both in-house and contractor supplied, are closely and effectively monitored.
However, from experience over the years there are many others that do not. I remember one such case.
Both tender evaluation exercises and inspections by the industry's research association [since closed] carried out by a professional laundry and linen services manager, highlighted that a contractor was not meeting the basic requirements of HSG(95)18, the lynch-pin of all NHS laundry operations, and had not been so doing for some time. Even so, the healthcare trust did not consider this to be "good or sufficient reason not to re-award the contract to the laundry company for a further period".
The driving consideration was, of course, money! Therefore, if you don't monitor effectively, you don't find the faults or complaints and management is happy.
In the case I described the inspecting officer commented: "Is this a joke?" Sadly, it was not.
A senior trust director had earlier stated in pre-tender and specification discussions: "We know the quality (from the existing contractor) is crap, but the price is right!" With that attitude, how can it be any other way?
