Flagship weathers one storm after another: The case of the bogus doctor who became a senior manager is the latest in a series of mishaps to hit the Government's leading hospital trust. Judy Jones reports

EVEN THE Christmas party landed Guy's in hot water last year, with a floorshow featuring scantily clad female dancers and a string of anti-Irish jokes that offended as many as it amused. Several guests walked out and the ensuing controversy prompted a review of the hospital's equal opportunities policy.

Launched last year as the Government's 'flagship' hospital trust, supposedly setting the pace for the developing internal market in the NHS, Guy's has scarcely weathered one storm before being engulfed by the next. As well as being one of Britain's best- known hospitals, it has become one of its most accident-prone. A month before its transition to trust status in April 1991, it forecast a pounds 1.5m surplus for the end of its first year as an 'opted out hospital'. Within days of becoming a trust, Guy's announced plans for 600 redundancies to help clear a pounds 6.8m deficit.

In July 1991, Price Waterhouse, the accounting firm, was called in to run the hospital's budget following the sudden resignation of Peter Borroughs, its finance director. Senior medical staff cited an irreconcilable clash between the commercial ethos of the new management and Mr Burroughs's traditional public service style.

The early rumpuses ensured Guy's a starring role in the Commons health select committee inquiry into the operation of NHS trusts. But the doubts cast by Nicholas Winterton, the Conservative MP then chairing the committee, about the first wave of semi-independent NHS hospitals, were excluded from the final report, after a draft was leaked to the Government.

Last autumn, the hospital suspended routine investigations and treatments for patients with heart complaints because the money for those services had run out. Doctors were told that none of the 350 patients on waiting lists for cardiology services could be seen until the start of the new financial year, the following April, unless admitted as emergencies.

In March this year, Graham Jackson, a Guy's cardiologist, said three waiting-list patients had died because they did not receive surgery in time. Pressed on the matter by the Commons health select committee, Peter Griffiths, the trust's chief executive, said that he had asked the Royal College of Physicians to carry out an independent inquiry. The report of that inquiry was considered by Guy's trust board on 24 June this year. So far the trust has declined to publish the report or discuss its findings.

Peter and Ursula Slennett feared their three-year-old daughter would die on a waiting list for surgery at Guy's to correct a congenital heart defect and a misplaced artery compressing her gullet. Nine months after the condition was diagnosed and still with no firm date for the surgery, the couple felt they had no option but to borrow pounds 8,500 to have the operation done privately at Guy's.

Backed by the local community health council, the couple, from Bromley, Kent, are to meet Sir Phillip Harris, the trust chairman, and Mr Griffiths on Wednesday to discuss their complaints.

Last week, Guy's was under attack again over the deaths of two children infected by a rare strain of bacteria that may have been transmitted between two wards by a doctor. Some parents whose children were treated in the wards criticised the hospital for not telling them of the dangers earlier.