Rotherham General Hospital: Yorkshire hospital fined £200,000 after four babies were exposed to 'serious risk'

Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Rotherham General Hospital, in South Yorkshire, had been repeatedly warned by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) about problems with its safeguarding training and other systemic deficiencies before the four youngsters’ multiple admissions between January 2019 and February 2020, Sheffield Magistrates Court heard.

Yesterday, District Judge Naomi Redhouse imposed the £200,000 fine stressing that the case was about failures in the systems of the hospital trust and not those of individual doctors and nurses working under “immense pressure”.

Ms Redhouse said she calculated the figure for the fine taking into account the pressures the trust and the wider NHS was under and after hearing it was looking at a £2.7m deficit this year.

The trust earlier admitted a charge that it exposed service users to “a serious risk of avoidable harm”.

The court was told how one eight-day-old baby was brought into the hospital on December 23 2019, suffering from breathing difficulties and bleeding from their nose and mouth.

It was only on the fifth visit to hospital – after a GP raised concerns – that a child safety examination took place revealing rib and leg fractures that were deemed non-accidental.

And the district judge heard how a month-old baby brought in with a mouth injury on January 20 2019 was on a child protection plan but this was not spotted by the paediatric nurse who examined the youngster.

Ryan Donohue, prosecuting for the CQC, said failings had been identified in areas including policy implementation, training, reporting, auditing and governance.

Eleanor Sanderson, for the trust, said: “The trust wishes to express to the court its deep regret for the circumstances which gave rise to these offences and the risk posted to those who required safeguarding.”

The trust was ordered to pay £33,068 in costs and a £170 victim surcharge.