Mr Haythornthwaite, a former BBC finance officer, joined the Trust after her arrest. He sent the email in August last year – around six weeks before her trial began.
He did not mention the Letby case directly but highlighted examples of these competing challenges, pressures on the hospital’s emergency department and matters relating to the Care Quality Commission – the hospital’s regulator responsible for ensuring the safety of patient care.
The email was sent to Dr Susan Gilby, the Trust’s chief executive at the time, Hilda Gwilliams, its director of nursing and quality, and Simon Holden, chief financial officer and deputy chief executive.
It said: ‘The finance and performance committee have again raised concerns about the range of critical issues that the Trust is trying to tackle at the moment.
“The feedback is that there are concerns about the urgent need for decision and prioritising around the many challenges and objectives facing the Trust.
“They have also commented that all of the reporting and evidence indicates that we are chasing far too many challenges/objectives (CQC, elective activity, ED [emergency department] pressures, staffing recruitment and costs, data and Cerner [an IT system] etc) all of which compete and conflict in the final measure of our delivery, that of finance.”
‘Trusts need to learn lessons’
Dr Gibbs, who was a consultant paediatrician at the Countess of Chester before he retired in 2019, said: “One of the really important things to come out of the dreadful situation of the Lucy Letby saga is that Trusts need to learn lessons.
“The priority should be patient care and patient safety. The Countess of Chester, because of what Lucy Letby did in the hospital, should be particularly willing to learn that lesson.”
Bill Yoxall, a retired consultant neonatologist who worked at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where Letby spent some of her training, told The Telegraph: “The role of the NHS is to look after patients. You can’t do that in isolation from the money [but] my Trust was very clear that they’d rather be sacked for being financially incompetent than being dangerous.”
A Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said: “Patient safety is our top priority and we strive to ensure we are always improving the services we deliver and the care we provide to our patients.
“While financial management is crucial to the management of any hospital, it is only one measure and one which needs to work seamlessly to support our aim to deliver the best care to our patients.”
