Absence of falls care plan
Barts Health NHS Trust received 3 coroners' reports about this hazard between 11 Nov 2015 and 28 Oct 2024.
They came from 3 different coroners in 3 coroner areas. A similar concern was raised again 2 times after the first warning.
A published response was found for 2 of the 2 earlier reports, stating 6 specific actions.
The story, report by report
Spacing grows with the time between reports.
“(2) Nursing notes documented a risk of falls/mobilisation and action to be taken, but there was no supervision arrangement in place. One to one care had been in contemplation.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Barts Health NHS Trust responded, stating 6 specific actions.Response (PDF) ↗
“The safety briefing during nursing handover is now to include a verbal handover of the care plans for patients assessed as at risk of falls to alert incoming staff members as to the risk and care plan.”
“daily auditing of all nursing and falls risk documentation must be carried out.”
4 more stated actions in the Promises tab.
- 7 years 11 months laterClosely relatedConfidence 0.90 · higha different coroner
“3. The consequence of (2) was that no falls care plan was completed.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Barts Health NHS Trust responded.Response (PDF) ↗
- 1 year 1 month laterClosely relatedConfidence 0.90 · higha different coroner
“That the plan of care put in place specifically to reduce the risk of falls for multiple patients was not followed.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Repeated from the earlier report:plancarefalls
Barts Health NHS Trust responded.Response (PDF) ↗
- All reports to Barts Health NHS Trust
Each row is one judged link between an earlier and a later report. Open a row to read both quotes, found word for word in the originals.
2015 → 2023Iris Fordham7 years 11 months after David White · different coronerClosely relatedConfidence 0.90 · high
Closely relatedConfidence 0.90 · highBoth reports highlight shortcomings in managing patients identified as at risk of falls, specifically gaps between documented risk and actual protective actions.
David White · 11 Nov 2015
“(2) Nursing notes documented a risk of falls/mobilisation and action to be taken, but there was no supervision arrangement in place. One to one care had been in contemplation.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Iris Fordham · 5 Oct 2023
“3. The consequence of (2) was that no falls care plan was completed.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Stated action in the response to the earlier report
“The safety briefing during nursing handover is now to include a verbal handover of the care plans for patients assessed as at risk of falls to alert incoming staff members as to the risk and care plan.”
2023 → 2024Ian Hegarty1 year 1 month after Iris Fordham · different coronerClosely relatedConfidence 0.90 · high
Closely relatedConfidence 0.90 · highBoth reports concern failures to implement or follow a falls‑prevention care plan. The earlier report notes that no falls care plan was completed; the later report states that an existing falls‑risk reduction plan was not followed.
Iris Fordham · 5 Oct 2023
“The consequence of (2) was that no falls care plan was completed.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Ian Hegarty · 28 Oct 2024
“That the plan of care put in place specifically to reduce the risk of falls for multiple patients was not followed.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗
Stated action
“The safety briefing during nursing handover is now to include a verbal handover of the care plans for patients assessed as at risk of falls to alert incoming staff members as to the risk and care plan.”
Stated action
“daily auditing of all nursing and falls risk documentation must be carried out.”
Stated action
“Multidisciplinary Team meetings on Ward 9F have now been changed to earlier in the day to discuss patients and make effective action plans for patient at risk of falls.”
Stated action
“A practice development team has been recruited to support ward staff in adhering to ward protocols and procedures including documentation, assessment of risks and communication.”
Stated action · timescale: 29 June 2015
“facilitated training from the 'Falls Lead' for the Trust to re-train nurses regarding the fall procedure and management and this took place on 29 June 2015.”
Stated action
“Site managers can now be contacted out of hours to ensure appropriate management of care.”
No specific action could be extracted with a verified quote.
No specific action could be extracted with a verified quote.
- Each report's concerns were extracted by Nemotron 3 Nano on Nebius Token Factory, each with a quote copied from the report.
- Concerns from reports to Barts Health NHS Trust at least six months apart were compared by meaning (Qwen3 embeddings) and wording (TF-IDF).
- The closest pairs were judged by Nemotron 3 Super with reasoning on. Only identical or closely related, with confidence of at least 0.70, are shown.
- Every quote was checked by code as an exact substring of the original text. Names of staff and family are redacted, and the deceased are named by report title only.
| Link | Meaning | Wording | Judge | Coroner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 → 2023 | 0.77 | 0.06 | Closely related · 0.90 | different |
| 2023 → 2024 | 0.80 | 0.13 | Closely related · 0.90 | different |
Judge model: nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b. How Nemotron did the work · Full methodology.
Next
Other chains for Barts Health NHS Trust
- Lack of transport suitability assessment for changing patient conditions2 reports · 2020–2026
- Governance failure in incident identification and poor quality of clinical notes3 reports · 2023–2025
- Over-reliance on NEWS algorithm and inadequate monitoring of deteriorating ED3 reports · 2024–2025
- Lack of strategic governance hindering incident identification2 reports · 2023–2025
This shows that a similar concern was raised again after an earlier report. It does not say why, and it is not a finding about any organisation or person. To report an error, see the corrections route.