A PENSIONER has attacked Colchester’s disgraced hospital trust, claiming negligence led to her husband’s death.

Dennis Bagley, of Heath Road, Wivenhoe, was admitted to Colchester General Hospital for a routine ankle operation, but died five days later from a blood clot.

His wife, Patricia, claims despite his age, her 76-year-old husband was fit and healthy when he went in to hospital. She believes his death could have been avoided.

She said: “I rang him at about 7.30pm on the Monday night and he said they had just taken an electrocardiogram (ECG), because he had collapsed in the bathroom.

“At about 9pm, I rang the nurses’ station and said I was concerned about the ECG.

“She said they didn’t expect to find anything to worry about and afterwards, I spoke to Dennis again.”

At 5.30am the following day, her husband died. Mrs Bagley is now in the process of suing the hospital for medical negligence, something she feels she must do out of respect for her husband.

She claims after Mr Bagley died, she discovered the ECG had never been looked at, although she insists it revealed the presence of the fatal blood clot. Mrs Bagley, 67, added: “The clot showed up on that ECG, 11 hours before he died. If they had read it, I believe he would almost certainly have been alive today.

“Dennis and I had known each other for almost 46 years, and were married for almost 44 years. Then, suddenly, he was just taken from me.I’m broken-hearted.”

An ECG machine uses a series of electrodes on key points of the body to measure the electrical impulses which make the heart function. It produces a graph which medics can read to see if the heart is working properly, has suffered damage and if there may be a clot in the bloodstream Mrs Bagley said she had decided to speak out now, ten months after her husband’s death, because of recent reports highlighting Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust’s hospital mortality rates. The figures and other failings led health watchdog Monitor to sack trust chairman Richard Bourne last week.

Mrs Bagley added: “I feel it has done the right thing by sacking him and unfortunately, this has shown me I am not alone.

“I would rather Dennis had been hit by a bus, because that would have been fate. But the hospital let him down. That is the final insult.”

Mark Prentice, a spokesman for the trust, said: “More than six months ago, we received two formal written complaints from Mrs Bagley relating to the care of her husband, who died in January.

“The trust investigated thoroughly all aspects of both complaints and wrote in detail to Mrs Bagley with the outcome of our inquiries.

“It has never been our policy to comment publicly in detail on individual cases. However, we can say we have passed on our condolences and, following our investigations, have apologised for some – but not all aspects of Mr Bagley’s time with us as a patient.

“Whenever patients or their families draw our attention to particular concerns, we treat it as an excellent opportunity to review the care individual patients receive and to make changes, if appropriate. If we make mistakes, we admit to them and implement changes for the benefit of future patients.”