Trust chiefs resist ‘pressure’ to treat patients in corridors

Hospital leaders say they have been pressured to deliver more ‘corridor care’ as a result of efforts to ease the ambulance handover crisis.

Due to the collapse in ambulance response times over the last year, hospitals have been told to receive patients from ambulance crews more quickly, to enable those crews to respond to new incidents in the community.

This can mean patients being kept on trolley beds in corridors, with a lack of appropriate staff to care for them.

Tracy Bullock, chief executive of University Hospitals of North Midlands, told HSJ  her trust almost eradicated “corridor care” before the pandemic.

But she added: “There have been discussions about going back to corridor care, but we have resisted that, as it brought significant patient safety and staff wellbeing issues… although these never received the same airtime as ambulance waits as they are unseen and only impact on the acutes.

“The terminology has now changed and instead of corridor care it’s ‘cohorting’, and the space is not necessarily a corridor but a designated space for ambulances to drop more patients off.”

She said this only works with enough staff, “otherwise you end up with the same safety issues that we had delivering corridor care pre-pandemic”.

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Source: HSJ, 11 July 2022