Health minister John Denham is sending Government inspectors into the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, after a damning report on its heart unit

He confirmed that an NHS Executive investigation into the Oxford Heart Centre had found serious management functions.

The Commission for Health Improvement will now send in its staff to bring about improvements.

The report being released today criticises the unit as dysfunctional and describes team-working there as "almost non-existent".

It highlights hostility between consultants and said nurses felt intimidated. It said management failed to respond to the problems although it found no evidence that patient care suffered.

The report criticised poor record-keeping, which meant clinical audits of the standard of treatment were not up to standard.

Mr Denham admitted today there were serious problems and said he had brought forward the regular inspection of the whole John Radcliffe so that management and patient care throughout the hospital could be examined.

It would look at whether there were complaints about the standards of patient care in the heart unit. Mr Denham said implementing the 34 recommendations from the report and any further recommendations from CHI - the Government's new body for inspecting standards in the NHS - would be a matter for hospital management.

Mr Denham said it was important that the Oxford Heart Centre, acknowledged as one of the leading specialist units in the country, was quickly operating efficiently again.

The investigation was launched in February when nurses expressed concern about the quality of pre- and post-operative care.

Several months earlier, an internal review was undertaken by managers at the John Radcliffe into the performance of surgeon Ravi Pillai, who was suspended from work. He was later reinstated at the hospital.

Earlier this week, his colleague and world-renowned heart surgeon Steve Westaby admitted that the unit was suffering severe problems.

He said he would not be surprised if the review was damning because of under-staffing problems and a lack of resources within the department.