A coroner has warned that staff at the East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) appear to have not carried out required observations on patients, then simply written fake reports pretending they did. Saba Naqshbandi KC, assistant coroner for Inner North London, raised the alarm after the trust admitted to “deliberate falsification of observation records” in one patient’s case. Investigations commissioned by ELFT uncovered 11 subsequent “fatal incidents” where records may have been faked – and found cases of staff fabricating records were going up, not down.
Questioned by this newspaper, the trust – which serves Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, the City of London, Bedfordshire and Luton – would not say this week that it was certain the fabrication of patient records had now stopped. Mrs Naqshbandi has written a report stating: “I am concerned that action undertaken so far by the trust has not been sufficient to ensure that observations are being conducted and/or recorded as required which in my opinion gives rise to a concern that future deaths will occur.” The scandal follows an inquest into the death of Mahamoud Hussain Ali, 40.
Mahamoud was found unresponsive in a room on Lea Ward, at the Tower Hamlets Centre for Mental Health, Mile End Hospital, on August 21, 2020. He died five days later, at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, having suffered brain death. Mahamoud should have received checks every 15 minutes but a mental health nurse testified at h.