Main criticisms of Stafford Hospital:

- Unqualified receptionists being allowed to carry out initial checks of patients in A&E

- Staff at the emergency assessment unit switching off heart monitors which they did not properly understand how to use

- In an attempt to meet the target four-hour A&E waiting time, patients were sometimes "dumped" in a ward without nursing care

- The hospital was routinely left without an experienced surgeon at night

- An insufficient number of nurses at the hospital

- The trust's management took part in no routine discussion on quality of care

Recommendations:

- The watchdog which oversees Foundation Trusts must look into the failings with urgency

- The Trust must recruit and train new nursing and medical staff.

- It must provide all patients with proper care when admitted into A&E, and better transition to wards

- All NHS Trusts must have better information on care, including death rates, and must do more to learn about, and consider, patients' quality of care

- All Trusts must identify shortcomings on hygiene, medication, nutrition, equipment, empathy, communication, compassion and hydration

Measures put in place by the Health Secretary:

- Sir George Alberti, national clinical director for urgent and emergency care, to lead an independent review of the trust’s current A&E services.

- National Quality Board, which recommends improvements in patient care, to ensure that the early warning system for clinical under-performance is working effectively across the whole of the NHS.

- Dr David Colin-Thome, National Director for Primary Care Medical Adviser, to review the standards of care and treatment at the trust between 2002 and 2007, the period before the Healthcare Commission began its investigation, to determine how the obvious failings were allowed to continue for so long.

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