New Cross role for axed heart doctor

Ian Clark Wilson is working unpaid at New Cross for three months and could be taken on permanently.

In October of last year he was sacked by the University Hospitals Birmingham Trust (UHB) and is now reported to be under investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC).

It is claimed that Mr Wilson changed information on a database to make his surgery results look more impressive.

If a GMC investigation were to find him guilty, Mr Wilson could lose his licence to practise.

Mr Wilson is not being paid by the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust to work at New Cross and is under supervision.

He will be there for three months in total, as part of an order by the GMC, and when his contract expires on June 20 he could be offered paid employment by the trust.

Chief executive David Loughton said the three months of supervised work would help Mr Wilson apply for jobs in future.

Mr Loughton added: "He is here to be skilled to return to practice in line with his GMC order. I understand that his dismissal from his previous employer was not related to clinical concerns.

"I have no knowledge of whatever conduct issues there were with his previous employment."

"I have discussed this with a number of people in this organisation and we don't have any concerns about his clinical practice."

It is claimed that an internal investigation carried out by the UHB suggested the surgeon was under-reporting the time patients spent on a heart-lung bypass machine.

The reported allegation was that he had shortened the length of time his patients were recorded as on heart-lung bypass to give the impression that his operations were going more smoothly than they were.

Is is believed Mr Wilson, who lives in Harborne in Birmingham, has been placed under a series of restrictions by the GMC pending the result of the investigation.

Under the guidelines he is prohibited from continuing his private practice, must confine his work in the NHS to cardiothoracic surgery under the supervision of a named consultant and he must inform the GMC if he accepts an offer of clinical employment elsewhere, including outside of the UK.

Should the GMC decide there is a case to answer, Mr Wilson would appear before a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service 'fitness to practice panel', which could see him suspended or even struck off.

In a statement UHB said: "Ian Wilson's contract was terminated by the trust in October 2013 following an internal investigation.

"His dismissal is the subject of a pending employment tribunal and the trust is therefore unable to comment further at this stage."

The database was set up by the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery and is now run by University College London.

Last year Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, sparked fury among surgeons when he said doctors who refuse to publish their data would be 'named and shamed'.

New Cross Hospital's much-vaunted Heart and Lung Centre opened in 2004 and has consistently recorded some of the lowest death rates in the country for serious heart surgery.

The building will directly link with the hospital's new £30million Emergency Centre when it opens in November 2015.