Dying Corringham woman, Kim Brown, forced to wait more than five hours for scan in Hartswood Hospital

A WOMAN who died after a routine operation had to wait nearly five hours for an urgent scan, an inquest heard.

Kim Brown, 47, from Corringham, died later the same day at the Hartswood Hospital in Brentwood where she had been admitted for a routine hysterectomy the day before.

The operation which was carried out by Consultant gynaecologist Rajiv Varma at 11am on March 1, 2005, appeared to go well but later that day she was rushed back into theatre for emergency surgery.

Her condition deteriorated further over night and consultant neurologist Mr Rudy Capildeo ordered that she should be sent for a CT scan at 8.30am.

But it was not until 1.15pm that the ambulance arrived to take her from Hartswood, which at the time was run by BUPA and didn’t have it’s own CT scanner, to the Essex Nuffield also in Brentwood.

Clare Homsi, the nurse who had been responsible for Mrs Brown, told the inquest at County hall in Chelmsford she did not know why it had taken so long.

She said: “We have to book the appointment and the ambulance and arrange for a nurse to be available for escorting.

“The organisation would take a minimum of half an hour.”

Asked by Nathan Taveres for the family if she considered Mrs Brown’s wait exceptionally long she said: “It’s a little loingish but I wouldn’t say it was exceptionally long.”

When Mrs Brown returned to the Hartswoood Nurse Homsi raised the alarm.

She said: “I pressed the cardiac arrest button, not because she’d had a cardiac arrest but because it was the quickest way of getting people around.

“Mr Capildeo and Mr Varma were there almost all the time until she died.”

Mrs Brown was pronounced dead at 10pm on March 2 2005.

The case continues.

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