An NHS ambulance service misled coroners by changing documents and witness statements about deaths linked to how it treated patients, it has been reported.
North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) has been accused of doctoring multiple reports and keeping families in the dark about exactly how their loved ones died.
It is claimed that coroners were not given key evidence and that senior managers at the service edited witness statements that had been requested, in some cases making it look like no mistakes had been made.
According to The Sunday Times, whistleblowers say this could have happened in as many as 90 cases in the last three years, with the whistleblowers offered non-disclosure agreements worth more than £40,000 by the trust.
Whistleblowers say that despite a report by auditing firm AuditOne, which was done in 2020 and shared with the chief executive of the trust and other senior staff, the problem remains.
The report, which took 30 cases from 2019 to February 2020, and looked at six in depth, found NEAS was not handing over documents to the coroner properly.
Among the cases it looked at are those involving a 17-year-old girl who was not given proper life saving treatment after she hanged herself, a 32-year-old man who died after he was left waiting more than an hour for an ambulance and a 62-year-old man who died when his oxygen machine cut out during a power cut.
In all these cases NEAS was found to have edited or withheld key information from the coroner and the families of those who had passed away.
The AuditOne report said: ‘It is not for the trust to determine whether to disclose a document. If it is relevant to the death it must be disclosed.’
One source told the Sunday Times there are concerns about the deaths of dozens of more people since the report and that the trust had put its reputation ‘ahead of everything else – even ahead of bereaved families’.
NEAS said it had made ‘significant improvements’ as the result of a ‘task-and-finish group’ which wrapped up last year.
Dr Matthew Beattie, medical director at NEAS, told the Sunday Times that concerns had been raised by staff in 2019.
In response a ‘task and finish group’ was set up and ‘concluded in January 2021 with these actions completed and assurances provided to our board of directors that significant improvement had been achieved.’
He added that concerns that have been raised involving patients who died after then were due to ‘minor issues’ of procedure and policy being followed and did not affect any families.
Among the deaths investigated in the report is the tragic case of Quinn Beadle, a 17-year-old girl who took her own life near her family’s home in Shildon, County Durham, in December 2018.
An internal investigation would later find an ambulance worker who was called to the scene did not clear her airway and failed to perform proper resuscitation methods despite an electrocardiogram heart monitor (ECG) showing no evidence she had ‘flatlined’.
The fact an investigation was taking place was not relayed to the coroner until after it had finished, and when the coroner requested the report, managers at NEAS decided to change it to omit key details.
These included references to the ECG, failure to clear her airway and provide proper life support, a well as a comment from the paramedic themselves admitting they should have done this.
Managers present at the meeting, which had no minutes or documentation, then decided to add ‘the decision not to start advanced life support upon reflection was the correct decision’, the opposite of what the paramedic had said.
In the report, which has been seen by The Sunday Times, AuditOne said the changes ‘removed a critical fact and changed the conclusions so dramatically that it did not reflect the findings within the report, nor the original conclusions drawn by [the clinician].
‘The most crucial part of the new conclusions was in direct contrast to the original conclusions.’
It added that when asked about these changes, the paramedic whose statement was changed felt unable to go against this as they were made by senior members of staff.
The coroner was unhappy with the doctored report and adjourned the hearing to allow for further investigations, before later telling the family NEAS had tried to turn ‘black into white’.
Her older brother, Dyllon Milburn, took his own life months after this was revealed, after being ‘haunted’ by the claims his sister could have been saved.
Tracey Beadle, Quinn’s mother, told the Sunday Times the trust had ‘just covered it up and covered it up’.
‘You just can’t believe that a service that’s supposed to look after people could lie to you like that.’
NEAS told the newspaper it had disclosed all evidence to the coroner before the adjourned inquest and an independent investigation was commissioned to look into what happened.
It added that while the coroner had been ‘critical’ of the trust, which operates across Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham, Darlington and Teesside, ‘he was satisfied the systems we put in place would prevent a repetition’.