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Published: 28 January 2010
by TOM FOOT

FRIENDS of a former television actor believe his death was triggered after he was repeatedly sent home from hospital too soon because of a shortage of beds.
Raymond Witch, 82, died just days after a “failed discharge” from the University College London Hospital.
Three times he was sent home from the Bloomsbury hospital despite concerns from friends and ambulance crews that he was unable to take care of himself.
Mr Witch, who played more than 50 TV roles, notably in the hit 1960s police drama Z Cars, was on one occasion taken back to hospital within hours of leaving UCLH following a nasty fall at home.
He died from a heart attack on December 8 after contracting the “superbug” MRSA in the hospital.
Distraught friends and pensioners’ groups blamed the rapid discharges, NHS targets and a shortage of recovery beds – but both the hospital and NHS Camden, the borough’s primary care trust, are refusing to accept responsibility.
Neighbour Helen McMurray said: “There is no doubt in our minds that the medical and other professional staff at the UCLH as a team and individually provided Mr Witch with a high level of care while he was in the hospital.
“However, having witnessed for ourselves the anxiety and despair he experienced each time he was discharged and the complications to his health that arose as a result of this, it was clear to us that the decisions made repeatedly to send him home led to a downward spiral in his health.”
She added: “I have worked with elderly people in Covent Garden and Holborn and there is a wider issue here. The way these people are being treated is not right – I think it’s quite wrong. One reason for the shortage of recovery beds is the single-minded drive of Foundation Trusts to meet acute patient targets.”
The events leading up to Mr Witch’s death coincide with a national debate currently raging about the downgrading of hospitals. The former health minister Lord Darzi has set in motion a series of funding reforms that have led to hospitals increasingly designating beds for emergencies rather than patient rehabilitation.
A report from the British Medical Association has predicted that one third of hospital beds will be axed in Camden over the next five years as part of massive cuts in NHS funding.
While hospitals are within their rights to discharge patients following emergency treatment, it is feared they could be doing so without a proper safety net at the other end.
Friends of Mr Witch said his care plan, set by social services, was inadequate and that he had been left for days with open wounds.
Alan Spence, chairman of the Bury Place Tenants and Residents Association, said: “There is a systemic problem with hospitals specialising in acute and emergency treatments. The funding is just not there for hospitals to follow through with recovery and convalescence. The problem is there is now a private tag attached to hospital beds.”
Ken Savage, 88, who lives in Belsize Park and who is president of the British Pensioners Trade Unions Action Association, said: “They give them a medical examination and then they just discharge them. This is the state of the health service – it’s cuts, cuts, cuts. Why don’t they cut the board executives and management consultants?”
Board members at NHS Camden, who are responsible for commissioning rehabilitation services  in Camden, are investigating complaints from Mr Witch’s friends of “serious difficulties in accessing recovery beds” and “a gap between the working of the acute and community services”.
The case has been raised at board meetings and with the hospital’s chief executive, Sir Robert Naylor.
To cover Camden, there are just 12 continuing care beds provided for long-term rehabilitation patients in St Pancras Hospital.
NHS Camden’s commissioning chief Rebecca Harrington told a meeting in December she would order 10 more “discharge” beds in the South Wing of UCLH and more are expected to follow.
Mr Witch, who lived alone and did not have any children, trained as an actor at the famous Rada School of Drama in the same year as Dame Judi Dench.
The pair were due to meet again after 50 years at a special reunion of actors joining the Rada school in the late 1950s.
Mr Witch’s acting credits also include stage roles. He was a regular member on the Bury Place Residents Association committee meetings. He visited his wife, an Alzheimer’s sufferer, every day in a care home.
A UCLH spokesman said: “It is not our responsibility to provide long-term recovery care for patients. Our job is to provide acute treatment for patients in care. This is one for NHS Camden.”
But a NHS Camden spokesman said: “We were sorry to have learned about the death of Raymond Witch and our condolences go to his family and friends.
“The decision to release Mr Witch was made by clinical staff at UCLH, and NHS Camden took no part in that decision-making process. There is a plan to expand the number of recovery beds in the borough.”
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