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A health watchdog sacked the chairman of an NHS hospital, accusing him of failing to cut high death rates, cancer care waiting lists and queues in the casualty ward.
Monitor, the body that regulates NHS foundation trusts, said it had serious concerns about the leadership of Richard Bourne, chairman of the Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust in Essex.
"Regulatory action has been prompted by the Trust's failure to comply with healthcare standards (and) its failure to exercise its functions effectively, efficiently and economically," the watchdog said in a statement.
The hospital missed its target to treat cancer patients within 62 days in the second quarter of this year and failed to make enough progress in cutting waiting times in accident and emergency to four hours or less.
Foundation hospitals were set up as part of a flagship government scheme to try to give local health chiefs more power over decision-making and budgets.
A patients' lobby group strongly criticised a second NHS Trust in Essex for its poor standards.
The Patients Association, an independent watchdog, demanded urgent reform of hospital regulation after inspectors found high death rates, dirty equipment and low standards of care during unannounced checks at Basildon and Thurrock NHS Trust.
The group said a new regulatory system was a "farcical box-ticking exercise" that was too slow to respond to evidence of failings at the trust.
Its director Katherine Murphy said that billions of pounds of NHS investment had failed to fix basic problems like dirty wards and a shortage of quality nursing care.
"The system of regulation and supervision needs to be urgently reformed," she said. "The evidence was there but not acted on. That is completely unacceptable.
"The new system will not introduce the kind of rigorous on-site assessment that is so desperately needed."
The Care Quality Commission (CQC), a public body set up earlier this year to regulate healthcare, rated the Trust's standards as "good", the second-highest mark. However, its inspectors uncovered a catalogue of problems in spot-checks shortly after the positive rating was published on its website.
There was blood on the floor and curtains, stained mattresses and a shortage of specialist staff to treat children at Basildon University Hospital, the inspectors noted.
Barbara Young, who chairs the CQC, said she would prefer a system where the data it collects on hospitals is more up-to-date and published more quickly on its website.
"The old system is being steadily renewed," she told BBC radio. "I do hope that we are not going to be diverted into blaming the regulator rather than focusing on hospital management that needs to get a grip on its quality."
The Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said the failings found by the inspectors were not a sign of wider problems.
"(It) is an extremely serious matter and we do not seek to underestimate its gravity," Trust Chairman Michael Large said in a statement. "The safety and wellbeing of our patients is our highest priority."
