Priority Healthcare admits safety flaws related to death of mentally ill patient

Healthcare provider Priory Healthcare has pleaded guilty to criminal safety negligence in connection with the death of a patient who escaped from a psychiatric hospital and was struck by a train.

Personal trainer Matthew Cavey, 23, was able to leave Birmingham’s Woodbourne Priory Hospital after being subjected to several minutes of “inappropriate neglect” in September 2020, a coroner’s jury heard in 2022. handed down a judgment.

Priory Healthcare Limited was told at Birmingham Magistrates Court on Friday that it had failed to provide safe care and treatment and “as a result put Matthew Cavey and other service users at significant risk of avoidable harm”. Admitted breaching the Health and Social Care Act 2008 by ‘acting to the public’.

A second charge brought under the same law was also dropped.

Priory Healthcare’s barrister Paul Greaney KC entered the guilty plea on behalf of the company.

The London-based healthcare provider was charged following an investigation into Mr Caseby’s death by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and now faces an unlimited fine.

An inquest heard in April 2022 that Mr Cavey was able to climb over a 2.3m high courtyard fence to be discharged from the NHS-funded hospital.

The University of Birmingham graduate should have been kept under constant supervision but was left alone, an inquest jury found, concluding his death was “caused by neglect”.

Following the judgment, Louise Hunt, senior coroner for Birmingham and Solihull, urged health directors to consider imposing minimum standards for perimeter fencing in acute mental health units.

Mr Cavey, who lived in London, was initially detained under the Mental Health Act five days before his death after reports of a man running onto railway tracks near Oxford.

Opening the case against Priory Healthcare at a Magistrates Court hearing, CQC barrister James Marsland said other patients had previously escaped from the ward.

Marsland said: “(The ward) had a courtyard that service users could access. Part of the perimeter was a fence, the shortest of which was 2.3 meters high.

“Prosecutors allege that they failed to properly assess risk and failed to provide safe care and treatment.

“The prosecution has not indicated that the defendant will be sentenced for causing Matthew’s death.”

Mr Cavey’s father, Richard Cavey, said in a victim impact statement read to District Judge Shamim Qureshi:

“He had lost touch with reality.”

After describing his son as a sensitive, kind and intelligent soul, Mr Cavey said Priory Healthcare’s attempts to “conceal the facts” about his son’s death and “avoid responsibility for significant failings” , said his son’s ability to feel grief had been blocked for many years.

Mr Cavey also told the court that the company had been “dragged kicking and screaming” to face hard evidence of its deficiencies.

Mr Cavey said his son had died needlessly and in the aftermath Priory Healthcare had made his family’s lives “indescribably painful”.

Speaking to Priory Healthcare chief executive Rebecca Cresswell, who attended the court hearing, Mr Greaney said:

“It should be understood by the public that the company does not admit to the charges that it alleges it caused Mr. Cavey’s death.”

The defense pleaded guilty that the company had put service users at risk of avoidable harm by failing to adequately investigate three previous disappearances from the borough, all of which had crossed the same fence. He added that it didn’t happen because of the incident. .

No patients were injured in the first two of the three incidents in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

However, in the third incident on July 17, 2020, a male patient who visited a supermarket sustained a cut on his leg.

Mr Greaney told the court that at the time of the incident, “there were no industry standards or guidelines in place” regarding the minimum height of fences for outdoor spaces attached to the type of wards involved.

Mr Greaney highlighted Priory Healthcare’s efforts to tackle the issue of missing patients, adding:

“Of course, it wasn’t a company that cared.”

Mr Greaney said the fence had been doubled in height and anti-climb roller bars were installed as part of continued efforts to ensure patient safety, but lessons had been learned.

A verdict in the case is expected to be handed down late Friday.