NHS boss defends taking staff on £17k Florida conference trip Published duration 28 October 2015

image caption Trust chief executive Dr Frank Harsent said he thought the £17,000 conference trip to Florida had been "money well spent"

An NHS boss has been questioned about taking seven staff to a conference in Florida, at a cost of nearly £17,000.

Last December, hospital staff attended a four day conference in Orlando a week before a "major incident" was declared at two Gloucestershire hospitals.

Cotswold MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said he thought sending eight people had been an "unnecessary extravagance".

But chief executive Dr Frank Harsent said one person could not attend all sessions and it was "money well spent".

At the beginning of December, eight members of the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust - including Dr Harsent - attended the 26th Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement.

The trip to Orlando cost the NHS trust £16,874, it has been revealed.

A week later, Gloucestershire Royal and Cheltenham General hospitals were put under major incident status as staff struggled to cope with the number of patients seeking emergency care.

'Nothing I could do'

Councillor Steve Lydon, former chair of the county's Health and Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee, questioned what the "actual gain" from the "junket" had been and Mr Brown said it seemed to be "an example where the trust is not looking at all its costs".

But a spokesman for the trust said the trip had been booked several months previously and Dr Harsent said there was nothing he could have done to stop the major incident.

"There's nothing I could have done the week before that would have stopped the flood of patients that hit us the following week," he said.

"I think it was well worth us going. We don't have all the answers here in Gloucestershire and we don't have all the answers here in the UK.

"We need to learn from others and we've come back with 19 actions that we're working on. I think it's money well spent."