NHS SPENT £680,000 TO SILENCE A DOCTOR WHO WAS TRYING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE
Dr Jasna Macanovic was a kidney specialist with 20 years of excellent NHS service at Portsmouth Hospitals (
@PHU_NHS). She watched patients suffer complications from a dialysis needle technique her colleagues had introduced. Bleeding. Clotting. Deaths.
She raised it internally. Nothing moved. So she went to the
@CareQualityComm. Then the GMC. That is literally what doctors are legally and professionally required to do.
Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust responded by sacking her for serious misconduct. The misconduct, in case you missed it, was reporting unsafe care to the regulator.
They called her aggressive. Intimidating. Unmanageable. The Employment Tribunal called it a predetermined unfair dismissal. Zero contributory fault on her part. She won at every single stage over five years.
The Trust legal bill to fight her: £680,000. Your money. NHS money. The compensation she was awarded: £219,000. The people who ran the disciplinary campaign against her, which the tribunal literally described as a counter-offensive, were later promoted.
CEO Penny Emerit was later handed an even bigger role running two NHS trusts simultaneously. The medical director who originally launched the disciplinary action against Dr Macanovic, Simon Holmes, moved to a board role at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The CQC investigated him and found no breach. The same CQC that had texted Dr Macanovic in 2016 to personally promise she was protected and could not lose her job.
She lost her job.
Nobody struck off. Nobody sacked. The Freedom to Speak Up policy sitting somewhere in a shared drive, largely decorative.
Sources: ET Case 1400232/2018 /
@Telegraph /
@alexander_minh