A GLOUCESTERSHIRE Hospitals NHS Trust boss has defended his taking seven staff to a conference in Florida, at a cost of nearly £17,000 to the health service, was "money well spent" .

Last December, hospital staff - including the Trust's chief executive Dr Frank Harsent - attended the four-day 26th Annual National Forum on Quality Improvement conference in Orlando a week before a major incident was declared at two of the county's hospitals.

The trip has been criticised for being "an extravagance" by Cotswold MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, saying the money could have been put to better use.

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

A week after the trip, 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.

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."

Mr Clifton-Brown suggested the trip could have been made more cost-effective.

“Whilst I understand that the health service needs to innovate, and learning from other countries is one way to achieve this, I do think that spending £17,000 on a conference trip to Florida seems an extravagance. I would question why the chief executive needed to lead a team of five consultants and two nurses and why the conference could not have been attended by one or two members of staff to report back. Given the extent of the Trust’s deficit it seems that this money could have been used more effectively.”