Former Stafford hospital surgeon accepts restrictions on his practice

A former surgeon at Stafford Hospital, where inquiries found “appalling” standards of care and hundreds of excess deaths between 2005 and 2008, has avoided a fitness to practise hearing at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service by taking an 11th hour decision to accept restrictions on his practice.

On the afternoon of Friday 15 March the General Medical Council announced that Roderick Hutchinson’s hearing, due to start on Monday 18 March and run for 10 days, had been cancelled after …