Months after the Government's healthcare watchdog gave Barnet Hospital a clean bill of health, the debate rages on over how safe it is. Tomasz Johnson asks the woman in charge of the hospital for her side of the story

From the café next to the entrance hall, where I met Averil Dongworth, Barnet Hospital certainly looks clean.

Of course, it's difficult to really tell when the notorious superbugs Clostridium difficile (C. diff) and MRSA are both caused by microscopic bacteria. But Mrs Dongworth, chief executive of Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals Trust, insists it is clean.

The trust, which manages Barnet Hospital, in Wellhouse Lane, and Chase Farm Hospital, in Enfield, has certainly taken a battering over the past few years.

The biggest blow came from the Healthcare Commission, which issued an improvement notice after an inspection exposed sub-standard hygeine levels last July. Then the Evening Standard uncovered further hygiene breaches in January this year - some substantiated and some not - through undercover investigations.

And these followed a BBC Panorama programme in May last year when a midwifery expert condemned the "third world conditions" in the hospital's maternity unit.

But Barnet and Chase Farm Hospital Trust was given the all-clear by the Healthcare Commission last October, while this year infection rates have continued to drop.

Even now, the murmurs of discontent from the trust's detractors, notably from Barnet Council leaders, continue. However, Mrs Dongworth says they are ill-founded.

"My staff have worked so hard to get the improvement notice lifted in a year when we've turned a £15 million deficit into a £2.6 million surplus, introduced a new computer system and become the fourth best in the country for access targets," she said.

"The trust has had a history of major financial problems and missing targets. We've turned that around and with all that going on, there were things that weren't right.

"But we never chose to argue and defend our position. What we did was say this is not good enough, we need to do better'. And we have."

C. diff infections are down to single figures per month across the two hospitals, while there were no cases of MRSA for 25 days until last Wednesday, when two emerged.

These infections are a reality in hospitals across the country but, Mrs Dongworth says, it is how they are dealt with and how the trust works to keep reducing their occurrence that is vital.

At Barnet Hospital, each case is investigated by an infection control team, reporting back to Mrs Dongworth, to try to identify the cause.

"That's how seriously we take every case and we learn a lesson from each one," she said. "I don't think you'll find many trusts that do that."

In the past year, Barnet Hospital has been subjected to gruelling inspections by the Healthcare Commission and has stood up to the scrutiny. The improvement notice was lifted in December - evidence that things are going right, according to Mrs Dongworth.

"I have a duty to the public I serve and my staff to ensure they have the right information about our progress," she said. "And we've probably been inspected more than any other trust in this regard because of the attention.

"It wasn't good enough last year. At the time, when we had the improvement notice, when I walked around the wards, patients were really scared and I can understand that. But everybody who comes in now talks about how clean it is."

Showing us around, Mrs Dongworth was so confident about the cleanliness of her once-beleagured hospital that we were offered access to any ward.

We opted for one at random and applied an alcohol lotion to our hands from a dispenser on the wall - one of the measures used to reduce contamination between patients.

But then we watched as two suited surgeons strolled into a neighbouring surgical ward without using the lotion.

Mrs Dongworth chased after them before catching up with us ten minutes later, when she leant forward and said quietly: "That's two young doctors kneecapped."

Perhaps the jury is still out.