Relatives of a terminally ill great-grandfather today accused ‘disgusting’ hospice bosses of ‘killing him off’ after he was forcibly moved in his final hours when they shut it down without notice.
Jack Tolson Holt, 83, died less than 48 hours after he was transferred into an emergency ambulance and driven 17 miles from the Sue Ryder Wheatfields Hospice, in Leeds, to a different hospice, in Keighley, last August.
Today ‘ineffective’ managers at Wheatfields were slammed for placing patients at ‘risk of harm’ and ‘directly contributing’ to poor care in a damning report.
The health watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), also rated the hospice inadequate and placed it into special measures amid concerns it is failing people receiving end-of-life care.
Mr Holt’s daughter, Michelle Turner, 63, told the Mail that she burst into tears when distraught staff told her about the last-minute decision to close during a routine visit.
She said by then her father, who was suffering from lung and brain cancer and other serious ailments, was just ‘skin and bone’ and she knew the move would kill him.
‘I was really shocked and just burst into tears,’ Mrs Turner, a retired property landlord, said.
‘I told them, ”There’s no way you are moving him,” but they wouldn’t listen and just said it was out of their control.
‘All the nurses were crying and hugging each other, they were also very distressed.
‘I couldn’t believe it. I knew that would be the last time I would see my father, I knew he wouldn’t survive the move. It was just so cruel and horrible.
‘I was with my son and we both had 15 minutes on our own with him and said our goodbyes. He died on the Sunday morning.’
Mr Holt’s wife of 64 years, Doreen, 82, and another daughter, Susan Barker, 64, managed to visit the retired auto-electrician the day before he died.
But Mrs Barker said the Keighley hospice was much further away from their homes, in Pudsey, and he passed away alone early the next morning.
She added: ‘It was absolutely disgusting what they did. We knew he was going to die, but going all that way to Keighley killed him off.
‘It was a terrible, terrible way to treat people when they are at their most vulnerable.
‘I was so angry. The ironic thing is we said no flowers at his funeral and instead asked people to donate to Sue Ryder. In fairness, all the nurses who looked after him were so lovely and caring. But that is sickening now.’
The daughter of another 44-year-old woman, who died three weeks after she too was moved, also contacted the Mail to express her disgust at her mother’s treatment.
The bowel cancer sufferer had spent three months at Wheatfields and was moved to Marie Curie Hospice, in Bradford, nine miles away.
‘My mum and three of the nurses were in tears,’ the 26-year-old, who didn’t want to be named, said. ‘It was dark when they put her in the ambulance. She was terrified, it was horrendous.
‘The nurses were incredible with my mum, we built up relationships with them, but the management just couldn’t care less.
‘Bradford was a lovely hospice but we live in Leeds so we couldn’t be there as often and my mum didn’t know anyone, it really upset her. I was sad that she had that much stress put on her in her final weeks.
‘I did the Starlight hike a month after my mum died and raised £1,000 for Sue Ryder, it was hard because her death was so fresh. But after what they did I felt a bit of an idiot – it was a real kick in the teeth.’
In total, seven terminally ill residents were moved in emergency ambulances to alternative hospices across Yorkshire between 5pm and midnight on August 16 last year. Another patient was discharged home.
One woman died within five hours of being moved, while two patients, including Mr Holt, passed away within 48 hours.
Mrs Turner added: ‘I just hope that whoever made that decision to close the hospice that night, without any prior notice given to those poor dying fragile patients, or their families, looks in the mirror every day and sees the refection of a cold, guilty, heartless person staring back at them, and then realises how much pain and torture they made those helpless vulnerable people endure at the end of their lives.’
The Mail revealed earlier this month that the short notice closure was the culmination of a ‘chaotic’ few months at the hospice, which staff alleged had become an ‘unsafe and toxic’ place to work because of the ‘autocratic’ behaviour of four of the most senior leaders – then interim service director, Sonia Clarke, head of clinical services, Victoria Hogg, head of operations, Quentin Krang, and chief nursing officer, Jane Turner.
Managers told families of patients and local news outlets that they had no choice to close because of staffing shortages.
But in reality, both medical and nursing staff levels were sufficient and instead nurses say the decision was made following whistleblowing allegations about the hospice’s poor leadership.
In October, around 24 nurses and healthcare assistants lodged a formal grievance, via the Royal College of Nursing, with executives at Sue Ryder, the national charity which runs the hospice with 30 per cent funding from the NHS.
It re-opened a month later but at least 20 staff have since left, with one lodging legal action, in the form of an employment tribunal, against the organisation. Other nurses who left were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Inspectors from the CQC were alerted by worried staff and patients’ relatives and visited unannounced in March and May this year. Their report, published today, is highly critical of senior leaders.
But the Mail can reveal that bosses at Sue Ryder have spent the past few weeks trying to get a legal injunction to block the publication of the document.
According to a leaked memo, the hospice ‘paused’ all new patient admissions in anticipation of its publication last week.
James Sanderson, chief executive of Sue Ryder, has pledged to take legal action against the CQC and described their report as ‘misleading, unnecessarily alarming (and) a shockingly inaccurate assessment of Wheatfields hospice.’
He previously claimed the charity had no choice but to close the hospice because of staffing shortages and patient safety concerns.
‘The decision (to close) was not taken lightly as we were acutely aware of the impact this would have on our patients, but we were left with no other option,’ he said.