Jo says she had trusted the people she considered colleagues to do the best for her.
“You go to work to do your best, don’t you?” she says. “So why would I think that anybody else wouldn’t?”
She now says she feels “mutilated” by what happened to her, and feels the mistakes made by the trust were “absolutely unforgivable”.
The consultant overseeing Jo and Denise’s care was Mr Amir Bhatti, who was CDDFT’s clinical lead for breast services from 2013-24. He has now been suspended from carrying out clinical practice but is still employed by the trust on full pay.
Last year, we reported that nearly £6m had been paid by the trust over six years to breast cancer diagnostic clinics and surgery companies run privately by Bhatti.
Concern about this arrangement was raised in a 2025 review into the running of the trust, carried out by governance specialist Mary Aubrey,
She said outsourcing patient appointments had created financial incentives which were potentially “a risk to clinical standards”.
Payment per service is not uncommon in healthcare, Russell argues, although he tells us the trust has now ended this arrangement for breast cancer services.
“We recognise there was a conflict of interest that wasn’t managed properly,” he says.