A number of improvements have been made into renal services at East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, following findings from a recent Patient Safety Incident Investigation into the suspension of dialysis at Bedford Renal Unit in February 2024.
The findings will be discussed at the next Trust board meeting – you can view board papers for the meeting here.
Dr Justin Daniels, medical director at East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust said:
“The care of patients with chronic kidney failure is complex and patient safety is our top priority.
“We acknowledge the findings of the recent investigation into the incident at Bedford Renal Unit and apologise for the impact this had on our patients and staff.
“Where issues like this arise, we always take swift action – including suspending dialysis if necessary, and ensuring improvements are put in place rapidly.
“We have taken immediate steps to address a number of concerns raised during the report and continue to prioritise longer-term improvements to ensure patient safety.
“We encourage our renal patients and their families to continue speaking to our staff if they have any questions.”
Many actions identified by the report are already in place and ongoing improvements are being made to a number of key areas including to the monitoring of water quality, ensuring our long-term dialysis capacity and service resilience, and improving our risk management.
We would like to thank our patients, their families, and the Lister Area Kidney Patient Association (LAKPA) for their involvement in the investigation. We will continue to provide regular, timely updates on the progress of our improvement work.
Notes to editors:
- The initial findings of the report identified a number of key themes around water quality, equipment, protocols and processes, and capacity of the service.
- We have not waited for the final report before acting. So far, we have:
- Enhanced our water quality monitoring processes
- Engaged expert engineers to oversee and verify all maintenance works
- Continued improvements to our risk management framework to ensure greater accountability and transparency of risk management ownership.
- Made significant investments to improve dialysis infrastructure. These include the installation of new RO plants and water ring replacements across Bedford, St Albans, inpatient areas.
- Committed to developing a 20-station modular dialysis unit, which is expected to be operational on the Lister site by March 2025. This new unit will significantly increase our long-term dialysis capacity and enhance service resilience.
