Trust criticised over handling of 60-hour A&E waits

Senior staff have questioned why a major hospital did not seek support from neighbours when emergency patients were left waiting more than 60 hours to be admitted to a bed.

Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation Trust’s emergency department came under severe pressure last week, with patients being bedded down in corridors and facing very long waits to be admitted to a ward.

Senior sources told HSJ there were two cases where patients were waiting more than 60 hours last Monday, and the trust declared an internal incident.

But the sources felt the trust should have escalated its alert level to “Opel 4”, which prompts calls for external support when trusts are under the most severe levels of operational pressure. This can include diverting ambulances to other hospitals.

The trust apologised to patients who had been kept “waiting for a long time” but that the required threshold for Opel 4 had not been reached.

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Source: HSJ, 25 October 2022