Wirral manager admits fiddling figures

A former manager at Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has admitted fiddling with A&E waiting time figures on the hospital’s computer system.

The Liverpool Echo reports that in a Nursing and Midwifery Council tribunal hearing, nurse Maria Bernadette De Lourdes Jeffery said she had entered false information about patients on the trust’s patient care information system.

She also confessed that she had thrown casualty cards, or CAScards, containing information about individual patient waiting times on to the top shelf “so they would fall down the back of them.”

The nurse said that while she was employed as a manager in the A&E department, she encouraged staff to alter information added to the casualty cards.

A document provided on the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s website, says that Jeffrey is accused of a number of allegations whilst working as a manager in the A&E department at Arrowe Park Hospital between 2004 and 2009.

Jeffery admitted all of the allegations against her and said that while she was employed at the hospital, she moved patients into the clinical decision unit in order to stop the clock on the four hour target.

The Liverpool Echo reports that the allegations became known by the trust in June 2009. Following an internal investigation, Jeffery and another staff member, chief nurse Michael Monaghan, were dismissed after a panel ruled there had been “gross misconduct.”

A Nursing and Midwifery Council panel, which will judge if their fitness to practice is impaired by this, also heard that an A&E matron had seen Jeffery with a bin bag filled with patient casualty cards which she was throwing around.

The case, which began on 6 January was adjourned. No new date has been set.

Wirral implemented the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record system in May 2010, after Jeffrey had left the trust.