A HOSPITAL trust has been fined more than £1.3 million following patient deaths including a man from Newtown.

The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) was sentenced for safety failings at Telford Magistrates' Court on Wednesday (May 18).

The failings were linked to the deaths of pensioner Max Dingle, 83, from Newtown, whose head became trapped between a bed rail and a mattress in 2020 after he was admitted with chronic lung disease, and 31-year-old Telford dialysis patient Mohamme Ismael Zaman, who suffered severe blood loss while undergoing dialysis in 2019.

SaTH admitted the charges through its barrister at Telford Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday morning.

Opening the facts of the case against the trust, the CQC’s lawyer Ryan Donoghue said the failures in care provided to Mr Zaman “were the legal cause of his death, for which the trust is responsible”.

Mr Donoghue added that Mr Dingle’s “head was trapped between the bed rails and mattress” after he was admitted with chronic lung disease.

An alarm was immediately raised when Mr Dingle was found, the court heard, and he was freed, but he died from a cardiac arrest.

The court heard the deaths occurred at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital in October 2019 and May 2020.

Referring to the death of Mr Dingle, Mr Donoghue said: “The basis (of the guilty plea) is that the failures exposed him to a significant risk of avoidable harm.”

Passing sentence, Senior District Judge Paul Goldspring said the families of the two patients who died at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital in 2019 and 2020 had suffered “unimaginable grief.”

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The judge imposed a fine of £800,000 on one of two charges relating to the death of 31-year-old Mohammed Ismael Zaman, and an additional £533,334 over a charge brought in relation to the death of Max Dingle, aged 83.

The judge said the offences were aggravated by a fine the Trust received in 2016 and a “poor health and safety record in the management of” the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.

Mr Goldspring added that the charges were mitigated by the Trust carrying out “full and extensive investigations immediately after both incidents”.

Ahead of the court hearing, the Care Quality Commission said in a statement: “CQC brought the prosecution following two separate incidents, each resulting in the death of a patient, after they were allegedly exposed to the risk of avoidable harm at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.”

The trust was recently the subject of a highly critical report into the maternity services it offered between 2000 and 2019.

An independent review of maternity services, chaired by Donna Ockenden and published in March, found “repeated errors in care” at the trust, which led to injury to either mothers or their babies.

Some 201 babies could have – or would have – survived if the trust had provided better care, the report said.