A care charity has been fined £10,000 after an elderly care-home resident died after receiving injuries from a fall while being hoisted into his bed.
The incident, which occurred at a MacIntyre Care home in St Albans, on 26 February 2007, left a 56-year-old man with fractures to his hip and elbow.
It happened as the result of an unsupervised new member of staff failing to correctly attach the sling to the hoist. A coroner cited the fall as a contributing factor in the man’s eventual death of Sepsis.
MacIntyre Care pleaded guilty to breaching section 3 of the HSWA 1974, at St Albans Magistrates Court on 4 November, and was fined £10,000 with costs of £2476.
In mitigation the charity claimed that it had learned from its mistakes and had acted quickly to put measures in place to ensure that there would be no repeat of the incident. It also stressed that the man’s death was not a direct result of the injuries he received during the fall.
HSE inspector Rubeena Surnam told SHP: “This was a needless death and demonstrates that care homes should take positive steps to ensure that risk assessments are carried out correctly.
“The incident was the direct result of an employee not receiving adequate training in the use of hoist equipment. To make matters worse he was left unsupervised to carry out the lift. The charity should have provided better training and supervision. If this had been done the accident would not have happened.”
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