Jump to content

Search the hub

Showing results for tags 'Accident and Emergency'.


More search options

  • Search By Tags

    Start to type the tag you want to use, then select from the list.

  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • All
    • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Culture
    • Improving patient safety
    • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Leadership for patient safety
    • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Patient engagement
    • Patient safety in health and care
    • Patient Safety Learning
    • Professionalising patient safety
    • Research, data and insight
    • Miscellaneous

Categories

  • Commissioning, service provision and innovation in health and care
    • Commissioning and funding patient safety
    • Digital health and care service provision
    • Health records and plans
    • Innovation programmes in health and care
    • Climate change/sustainability
  • Coronavirus (COVID-19)
    • Blogs
    • Data, research and statistics
    • Frontline insights during the pandemic
    • Good practice and useful resources
    • Guidance
    • Mental health
    • Exit strategies
    • Patient recovery
    • Questions around Government governance
  • Culture
    • Bullying and fear
    • Good practice
    • Occupational health and safety
    • Safety culture programmes
    • Second victim
    • Speak Up Guardians
    • Staff safety
    • Whistle blowing
  • Improving patient safety
    • Clinical governance and audits
    • Design for safety
    • Disasters averted/near misses
    • Equipment and facilities
    • Error traps
    • Health inequalities
    • Human factors (improving human performance in care delivery)
    • Improving systems of care
    • Implementation of improvements
    • International development and humanitarian
    • Safety stories
    • Stories from the front line
    • Workforce and resources
  • Investigations, risk management and legal issues
    • Investigations and complaints
    • Risk management and legal issues
  • Leadership for patient safety
    • Business case for patient safety
    • Boards
    • Clinical leadership
    • Exec teams
    • Inquiries
    • International reports
    • National/Governmental
    • Patient Safety Commissioner
    • Quality and safety reports
    • Techniques
    • Other
  • Organisations linked to patient safety (UK and beyond)
    • Government and ALB direction and guidance
    • International patient safety
    • Regulators and their regulations
  • Patient engagement
    • Consent and privacy
    • Harmed care patient pathways/post-incident pathways
    • How to engage for patient safety
    • Keeping patients safe
    • Patient-centred care
    • Patient Safety Partners
    • Patient stories
  • Patient safety in health and care
    • Care settings
    • Conditions
    • Diagnosis
    • High risk areas
    • Learning disabilities
    • Medication
    • Mental health
    • Men's health
    • Patient management
    • Social care
    • Transitions of care
    • Women's health
  • Patient Safety Learning
    • Patient Safety Learning campaigns
    • Patient Safety Learning documents
    • 2-minute Tuesdays
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Annual Conference 2018
    • Patient Safety Learning Awards 2019
    • Patient Safety Learning Interviews
    • Patient Safety Learning webinars
  • Professionalising patient safety
    • Accreditation for patient safety
    • Competency framework
    • Medical students
    • Patient safety standards
    • Training & education
  • Research, data and insight
    • Data and insight
    • Research
  • Miscellaneous

News

  • News

Categories

  • Files

Calendars

  • Community Calendar

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start
    End

Last updated

  • Start
    End

Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End


Group


First name


Last name


Country


Join a private group (if appropriate)


About me


Organisation


Role

Found 421 results
  1. News Article
    An investigation has been launched into BT following the major disruption to 999 call services on Sunday. Emergency services across the country reported 999 calls were failing to connect because of a technical fault. BT, which manages the 999 phone system, apologised for the problems which were resolved by Sunday evening. The communications regulator, Ofcom, will now investigate whether BT failed to comply with its regulatory obligations. In a statement, Ofcom said its rules required BT and other providers to take "all necessary measures to ensure uninterrupted access to emergency organisations as part of any call services offered". While the incident was ongoing Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service warned of a 30-second delay to connect to 999, while Suffolk Police said its system was not working to full capacity. Read full story Source: BBC News, 28 June 2023
  2. News Article
    The NHS needs to do more to support care homes and people who have fallen with alternatives to ambulance calls and hospital admissions, the NHS England chief executive has said. Speaking at the Ambulance Leadership Forum, Amanda Pritchard acknowledged this winter would be a difficult one for the health service, saying: “The scale of the current and potential challenge mean that we do need to continue to look further for what else we can do… We need to pull out all the stops to make sure that they [patients] get that treatment as safely as possible and as quickly as possible.” She added one area of focus should be making sure certain patient groups can access other – more appropriate – forms of care, rather than calling an ambulance by default and often resulting in hospital admission. On care homes, she said: “Can we wrap around even more care for these care homes so they get to the point where they don’t need to call for help at all or, if they do, there are alternatives pathways [to the emergency department]?” She suggested another area where responses could be made more consistent was for patients who had fallen but without serious injuries, which she said made up a “really significant part of activity”. These patients took a long time to reach and, if admitted to hospital, risked long admissions, she said. Some areas were working to find other ways of responding to non-injury falls patients and trying to keep them away from hospital, she said. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 6 September 2022
  3. News Article
    NHS trusts across London are set to start moving patients from A&E onto wards “irrespective” of whether there are beds available, The Independent has learned. The new model, which involves moving patients every two hours out of A&E and onto wards called acute medical units, has prompted concerns that patients could be “double lodged” on hospital wards. The move follows the trial of a new system by North Bristol NHS Trust last month, which said it would be moving three patients every hour from A&E onto wards in a bid to address severe ambulance handover delays. On Thursday, health secretary Steve Barclay said that the “number one” priority for the NHS currently is tackling ambulance handover delays, with a “small” number of trusts accounting for half of all delays. In a memo seen by The Independent, NHS clinicians in one hospital were told that London trusts would be rolling out the North Bristol model at “pace” ahead of winter. The system involves moving one patient from A&E onto a ward every two hours “irrespective of bed availability”. Speaking to The Independent, one NHS director said the move would lead to “double lodging” patients, which means squeezing more patients into wards, and that this could be “dangerous” for patients. However, A&E doctors told The Independent that the move should be welcomed, as it spreads the crowding and risk for patients across hospital departments rather than confining it to A&E. Read full story Source: The Independent, 4 September 2022
  4. News Article
    Record NHS waiting lists cannot be attributed to the pandemic as the health service has been “steadily declining” for a decade, a report says. The number of people waiting for routine hospital treatment in England has almost tripled from 2.5 million in April 2012 to 6.78 million, after reaching 4.6 million in February 2020. While Covid accelerated this trend, analysis suggests that even without the pandemic waiting lists for elective care would stand at 5.3 million. The Quality Watch report, by the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation think tanks, says the NHS was “already stretched beyond its limits” before Covid struck. Analysis of performance figures show waiting times for scans, A&E and cancer care have been increasing for many years amid chronic staff shortages. This deterioration means thousands of cancer patients each month face unacceptably long waits for treatment — damaging their survival chances. The report found waiting times for 15 key diagnostic tests, such as MRI or CT scans, had also rocketed. In April 2012 632,236 patients were on waiting lists for these tests. This backlog increased to one million by February 2020 before hitting 1.6 million this year. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 5 September 2022
  5. News Article
    Patients waiting for surgery are turning up at A&E because they “can't cope”, the head of the NHS Confederation has warned. Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the body which represents all areas of the health service, said the NHS was in a "terrible situation" where it was facing "more demand than we can deal with". Some 6.7 million people are waiting to start hospital treatment after being referred by their GP, latest official data show. Urgent and emergency care is also under significant pressure, with 12-hour A&E waits increasing by a third in July to reach 29,317 - the worst on record. "We also know that people, many people, who are sick in the community waiting for operations, for example, and that's one of the reasons people end up in the emergency department because they get to the stage where they can't cope,” Mr Taylor said. "So the problem is that pressures in one part of the system drive pressure in others.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph (30 August 2022)
  6. News Article
    The NHS has been forced to publish hidden trolley waits data, after intervention by the UK Statistics Authority, The Independent has learned. In a letter to NHS Digital and NHS England in July, Ed Humpherson director general for regulation at UKSA asked the organisations to publish monthly data on patients whose total wait in A&E is longer than 12 hours, following an ongoing row with emergency care leaders. NHS England promised to publish this internal data but has yet to comply, and as a result it was referred to UKSA by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine over concerns that the public data is misleading. Dr Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told The Independent: “For some time, we have been calling for NHS England to publish the 12-hour data measured from time of arrival. This data will show the real scale and depth of the crisis that urgent and emergency care is facing. We believe that through transparency around the sheer number of patients facing 12-hour waits, we can drive political and health leaders into action. Read full story Source: The Independent (25 August 2022)
  7. News Article
    Patients may come to harm as a result of NHS 111 chaos, experts claimed on Tuesday as patients were advised to avoid the service this weekend. The helpline for urgent medical advice was targeted by cyberhackers earlier this month, leaving staff working on pen and paper. The Adastra computer software, used by 85 per cent of 111 services, was taken offline after the attack leaving call handlers unable to book out-of-hours urgent appointments and fulfil emergency prescriptions. But almost three weeks on, most staff are still operating without the system, leaving GPs unable to see patients’ medical records during urgent consultations or automatically forward prescriptions to pharmacies. The NHS has told hospitals to prepare public awareness campaigns to “minimise” pressures on urgent and emergency care services this winter. Some hospitals have already issued messaging urging patients not to turn up at accident and emergency (A&E), unless they are facing a “serious emergency.” Helen Hughes, chief executive of the charity Patient Safety Learning, said the continuing chaos raises “serious patient safety concerns” and will “inevitably result in avoidable harm”. Telling patients not to go to A&E “unless it is absolutely necessary” is only possible if GPs and NHS 111 “have the capacity and the resources to meet the demands that this places on them”, Ms Hughes said. “Significant delays in receiving a response are potentially missed opportunities for patients to receive timely medical advice and treatment that may prevent future harm,” she added. “Delays in receiving timely care and treatment will inevitably result in avoidable harm to patients.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph (23 August 2022)
  8. News Article
    Some of the country’s leading acute hospitals are not meeting a key NHS standard for mental health support in emergency departments, HSJ research suggests, with some regions faring better than others. Latest official estimates indicate that more than a third of EDs (36 per cent) are not yet meeting ‘core 24’ standards for psychiatric liaison – which requires a minimum of 1.5 full-time equivalent consultants and 11 mental health practitioners. The long-term plan target is for 70 per cent of acute trust emergency departments to have the optimum ‘core 24’ standard service by 2023-24. The NHS appears to be on track to hit this, with significant progress made, despite the pandemic. Annabel Price, chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ liaison faculty, said tackling the workforce crisis with a fully funded plan would “prove instrumental in boosting recruitment across all acute trusts”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 23 August 2022
  9. News Article
    On Monday, September 20, 2021, Michael Wysockyj felt unwell and did what any gravely sick person would do: he put his life in the hands of the ambulance service. The 66-year-old from Norfolk was whisked by paramedics to the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King’s Lynn at 6.28pm. Nearly four hours later, he was still trapped inside the vehicle. The hospital was too full to take him. He died at 4.42am. So great were the concerns of the coroner, Jacqueline Lake, that she took the unusual step of issuing a “prevention of future death” notice. “The emergency department was busy at the time and unable to offload ambulances,” she said in her report. “An x-ray cannot be carried out in an ambulance and must wait until the patient is in [the emergency department].” This episode should be an anomaly in the failure of emergency services. It is not. The crisis is “heartbreaking”, according to Dr Ian Higginson, vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. “If you call for an ambulance and you’re waiting many hours for one and you have a serious condition, that is going to have an impact on your outcome. It would be reasonable to assume the long delays that patients are subjected to waiting for ambulances at the moment will filter through into excess mortality.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 21 August 2022
  10. News Article
    The NHS is to launch a campaign urging the public to avoid A&E in an echo of appeals to protect the health service during the Covid pandemic. The head of the NHS has instructed hospitals to prepare a public awareness campaign calling for people to “minimise” pressures on urgent and emergency services. Such an instruction has never been issued so early in the year, and comes amid concerns that hospitals and ambulance services are already facing strains usually seen in the depths of winter. People suffering a genuine emergency will still be encouraged to go to A&E, but on Friday night there were warnings that the campaign risks exacerbating the problems caused by patients staying away from the health service during Covid. Prof Carl Heneghan, an urgent care doctor and professor of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford, said the NHS needed to be very careful about trying to dissuade the public from using services. “The NHS seems to be the only business I know that doesn’t know how to deal with demand, and work with the needs of its customers,” he said. “As an urgent care doctor, I need to be in front of the patient to do my job. It’s often too difficult for the new mum to know when it’s appropriate to turn to emergency services. These decisions are difficult – it’s the job of a doctor. “Too often I see elderly patients who apologise for taking my time and I say ‘don’t apologise – you could have been 24 hours away from death’.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 19 August 2022
  11. News Article
    A 90-year-old woman waited 40 hours for an ambulance after a serious fall. Stephen Syms said his mother, from Cornwall, fell on Sunday evening and an ambulance arrived on Tuesday afternoon. She was then in the vehicle for 20 hours at the Royal Cornwall Hospital. It comes as an ambulance trust warns lives are at risk because of delays in patient handovers. It was also reported a man, 87, who fell, was left under a makeshift shelter waiting for an ambulance. South Western Ambulance Service said it was "sorry and upset" at the woman's wait for an ambulance. Mr Syms, from St Stephen, told BBC Radio Cornwall: "We are literally heartbroken to see a 90-year-old woman in such distress, waiting and not knowing if she had broken anything. "The system is totally broken." He said it took nine minutes before his 999 call was answered. "If that was a cardiac arrest, nine minutes is much too long, it's the end of somebody's life," he said. Mr Syms said paramedics were "absolutely incredible people". He added: "The system is not deteriorating, it's totally broken and needs to be urgently reviewed." Read full story Source: BBC News, 19 August 2022
  12. News Article
    Senior doctors have raised concerns about the numbers of patients now dying in their A&E department due to extreme operational pressures. HSJ has seen an internal memo sent to staff at Royal Albert Edward Infirmary in Wigan, which warns it is becoming “increasingly common” for patients to die in the accident and emergency department. The memo suggests the department has reported five deaths in the latest weekly audit, when it would normally report one or two fatalities. The memo said: “Of the 72 patients in A&E as I write this, 16 have been there over 24 hours and 34 over 12 hours. The longest stay is almost 48 hours… “It’s becoming increasingly common to die in A&E. We have included A&E deaths [in weekly audits] for the last 4 years. They used to be 1 or 2. This week there were 5. They used to die at or just after arrival, but that’s changing too… “There is every reason to think winter will be worse.” The memo echoes warnings made by numerous NHS leaders in recent months around the intense service pressures and an increased risk of incidents and mistakes. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 17 August 2022
  13. News Article
    England’s mental health inpatient system is “running very hot” and operating well above recommended occupancy levels, HSJ has been told, as new funding to address the problem is revealed. The move was announced by NHS England mental health director Claire Murdoch in an exclusive interview with HSJ. It comes amid a steep rise in mental health patients waiting more than 12 hours in accident and emergency. Last month, an HSJ investigation revealed 12-hour waits for people in crisis had ballooned by 150% in 2022 compared to pre-pandemic levels. Problems finding specialist beds have been cited by experts as one of the root causes of A&E breaches. Ms Murdoch told HSJ the funds would not come from ”within the mental health service budget” and that they would be used to “help address any pressures where we think the answer is more of either beds or other urgent and emergency care which has a capital need.” NHSE is now working with the 42 integrated care systems to determine where the money can best be used. Ms Murdoch said the money would be spent ”where there is a particular need” and that there was “no blanket approach” to its allocation. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 10 August 2022
  14. News Article
    The chief executive of a trust trialling the new emergency care standards being considered by the government has called for a new six-hour target to either move patients out of accident and emergency, or for them to receive treatment. North Tees and Hartlepool Foundation Trust chief executive Julie Gillon told HSJ a new target should be set as a “body of evidence” indicates patients are at risk of deterioration following A&E waits of six hours or more. The proposal is likely to be broadly welcomed by many clinicians, but could prove controversial in some quarters. NHS England did not include a six-hour target in the bundle of new A&E metrics being piloted, and the proposal could be interpreted by some as a watered-down version of the existing four-hour standard. However, Ms Gillon cited analysis by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine last year which revealed thousands of excess deaths resulting from overcrowding and long stays in A&Es. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 4 August 2022
  15. News Article
    A&E waits are now “apocalyptic” and “worse than ever imagined” leaked NHS data shows, and could be driving 1,000 patient deaths a month, The Independent can reveal. Almost 700,000 people have waited more than 12 hours in A&E in the first seven months of 2022, according to leaked NHS data. The “hidden” monthly trolley waits, not published in national data, have more than doubled this year in comparison to 2019. Dr Katherine Henderson, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, warned data shows trolley waits are “worse than ever imagined” and said it is “scandalous” the real figures are not published despite promises. Dr Henderson warned the deterioration in A&E waiting times is the result of “decades of underfunding” and “unheeded warnings” over staffing and social care. In one message to staff in Nottinghamshire, seen by The Independent, hospital leaders said last week patients were waiting more than 40 hours for beds in A&E, while some areas of the hospital were running on a 1:14 staffing ratios and patients were waiting at home with no care. Read full story Source: The Independent, 1 August 2022
  16. News Article
    A cancer sufferer who says she faced a wait of 31 hours in A&E has compared the emergency department to "a cattle market". Tracy Summerson, who had nausea and a fever, was eventually admitted to Lincoln County Hospital last week. Ms Summerson said there were more than 30 other patients who waited a similar amount of time. The hospital said despite long waits, those who needed immediate care were "able to be seen and looked after". Ms Summerson, from Scopwick near Metheringham, described the scene as "just crammed, you were like cattle in a market". Ms Summerson, who has stage four malignant melanoma, said: "There was people coming with sick bowls being sick next to you. "When you are immune-suppressed you're supposed to go in a side room out of germs way, but they needed all the rooms for consultations." The family of an 83-year-old woman also contacted the BBC to say she waited more than 40 hours in a wheelchair in her nightdress after being taken to the hospital with a suspected brain bleed. The trust added: "We continue to see an increasing demand on our urgent and emergency care services coupled with patients staying much longer in our hospitals than previously experienced." Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 August 2022
  17. News Article
    Patients experiencing a mental health crisis were kept in a ‘short stay area’ of an emergency department for up to three weeks, a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report has revealed. The patients were in what the CQC described as a “short stay area” of the ED at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton. It is an area with no natural light, no TV or radio and only a toilet and washbasin, with a shower available on a neighbouring ward, the CQC said. The patients were reviewed daily by a mental health liaison team from another trust while they waited for a mental health bed to be found. The CQC report said staff reported the longest stay was up to three weeks, while trust data showed the average length of stay was 52 hours. It said the urgent and emergency services at the hospital – part of University Hospitals Sussex Foundation Trust which is rated “outstanding” overall by the regulator – “did not fully meet the needs of the local population”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 29 July 2022
  18. News Article
    Mental health patients who arrive at emergency departments (ED) in crisis are increasingly facing ‘outrageous’ long waits for an inpatient bed, with some being forced to wait several days. HSJ research suggests ED waits of more than 12 hours have ballooned in 2022, and are now around two-and-a-half times as high as pre-Covid levels. Early intervention for patients in mental health crisis is deemed to be crucial in their care and recovery. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine said the findings are a “massive concern”, while the Royal College of Psychiatrists described them as “unacceptable”. RCEM president Katherine Henderson said the experience of mental health patients in accident and emergency departments “is not what it should be from a caring healthcare system”. She said: “We have massive concern for this patient group. We feel they are getting a really poor deal at the moment. “The bottom line is there are not enough mental health beds. There are not enough community mental health services to support patients and perhaps therefore prevent a crisis and the need for beds in the first place. “Mental health crisis first responder teams work – a mental health practitioner working with the ambulance service can prevent the need for an ED visit.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 19 July 2022
  19. News Article
    Hundreds of children suffering from mental health issues are attending A&E each day, with some waiting up to five days in emergency departments, The Independent can reveal. Internal NHS data leaked to The Independent, shows the number of young patients waiting more than 12 hours from arrival has also more than doubled in the last year. A national survey of senior A&E doctors by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) found in some areas children’s mental health services have worsened in the last three years, while the majority of respondents warned there were no children’s crisis services open after 5pm. One NHS trust chief executive has warned his hospital’s A&Es have seen a “real surge” in both attendances of people with severe mental health issues and a sharp increase in long waits in recent months. One parent, Lee Pickwell, told The Independent his daughter was admitted to paediatric wards several times and stayed days in an emergency “section 136” unit while she waited more than two months for a mental health bed. Dr Mark Buchanan, RCEM’s lead for children’s mental health, told The Independent that despite improvements, children’s mental health services still fall short of what is needed. Dr Buchanan said: “I’ve seen children who have been not seen by Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), who been refused the referrals, despite the fact that the mum and dad were taking it in turns to sleep outside their bedroom door because they were scared that they’d run away and do some harm.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 13 July 2022
  20. News Article
    A spike in Covid absences and the extended heatwave have left NHS hospitals and ambulance services struggling to cope. The hot weather is also driving more patients to A&E departments, and callers are being urged not to use 999 except in serious emergencies. All 10 ambulance trusts in England are on black alert, the highest level, while health leaders warn that “ill-equipped” hospital buildings are struggling to store medicines correctly amid the abnormally high temperatures. Martin Flaherty, managing director of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, said: “The NHS ambulance sector is under intense pressure, with all ambulance services operating at the highest level of four within their local resource escalation action plans, normally only ever reserved for major incidents or short-term periods of unusual demand. “Severe delays in ambulance crews being able to hand over their patients at many hospital emergency departments are having a very significant impact on the ambulance sector’s ability to respond to patients as quickly as we would like to, because our crews and vehicles are stuck outside those hospitals.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 12 July 2022
  21. News Article
    Patients may be turned away at A&E in Portsmouth as the UK’s heatwave drives extreme hospital pressures. Staffing pressures coupled with additional strain from the current heatwave have forced Portsmouth Hospitals University Foundation Trust to declare a critical incident. The trust said it only had space in its emergency department for patients with life-threatening illnesses and critical conditions and so would be forced to redirect other patients elsewhere. In a statement, Portsmouth Hospitals University FT said: “Our emergency department remains full with patients and we have very limited space to treat emergency patients. We are only able to treat patients with life-threatening conditions and injuries, so anyone patients who arrive at ED without a life-threatening condition or injury, will be redirected to alternative services that can help... “Our immediate priority is to ensure there are beds available to admit our most seriously ill patients into and we are focusing on safely discharging as many patients as possible. We ask that families and loved ones support us with this and collect patients as soon as they are ready to be discharged.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 11 July 2022
  22. News Article
    Paramedics have begun looking after patients inside an A&E unit, in an initiative by the health service to stop ambulances queueing outside hospitals and ease the strain on overstretched casualty staff. The scheme has led to patients being handed over much more quickly at a hospital that was one of the worst in England for sick people being stuck, sometimes for many hours, in the back of an ambulance. Queen’s hospital in Romford, in east London, has set up an ambulance receiving centre (ARC) near its main casualty unit in which two London Ambulance Service paramedics are on duty round the clock to help look after patients who would otherwise be trapped outside or in a corridor, waiting to be seen. Patients who end up in the new six-cubicle unit behind the A&E nurses’ station have a better experience while they wait and are more comfortable – and safer – because they can have their relatives with them, eat and drink and use the toilet more easily. Almost 2,000 patients have passed through the ARC since it opened last November, saving nearly 13,000 hours of ambulance crews’ time and enabling them to respond to emergency calls more quickly. However, some A&E doctors regard the scheme as merely “a sticking plaster”, given that queues of ambulances have become common outside many hospitals and that casualty units are treating the lowest percentage of patients within four hours on record. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 3 July 2022
  23. News Article
    Next week’s rail strikes will ’probably end up killing people’ as they will prevent staff working for already struggling ambulance trusts from getting to work, a senior NHS leader has told HSJ. Both London Ambulance Service Trust and South Central Ambulance Service Foundation Trust have moved to ”Reap 4”, This is the highest level of alert, meaning they are under extreme pressure. Ambulance trusts are already experiencing high demand amid soaring temperatures and continuing problems with lengthy handovers at the accident and emergency departments. Fears are now growing that next week’s rail strikes will push services to breaking point as many ambulance staff travel to work by public transport. The three days of rail strikes – on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday next week – will see many lines with very limited services. Tube services in London will also be hit by a strike on Tuesday and the London Overground and some tube lines will be affected on rail strike days. A senior leader closely involved in southern England’s emergency and urgent care services told HSJ: “Next week’s rail strikes will probably end up killing people because they’ll prevent ambulance trust staff getting to work.” Other ambulance trusts are understood to be monitoring the situation closely. Trusts in REAP 4 (REAP stands for resource escalation action plan) normally take a series of measures including diverting more staff to frontline duties, asking some patients to make their own way to hospital and concentrating on reaching the most serious patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 16 June 2022
  24. News Article
    Delays unloading ambulances at busy hospitals are causing serious harm to patients, a safety watchdog is warning. The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch has been investigating how the long waits are delaying 999 emergency response times across England. Kenneth Shadbolt, 94, waited more than five hours for an ambulance after a bad fall - an accident that proved fatal. Logs show that in his final 999 call he asked: "Can you please tell them to hurry up or I shall be dead." Ken Shadbolt had been in good shape for his age. On the night of Wednesday, 23 March 2022, just before 03:00, he got out of bed to go the bathroom and fell, hitting a wardrobe before collapsing on the floor. He had hurt his hip - how badly he didn't know - and couldn't get up. He could reach his mobile on his bedside, though, and dialled 999 for help. The BBC has seen transcripts of the three separate phone calls he made to South Western Ambulance Service that night. The first was short and factual, covering the basic details of his injury. He seemed calm and lucid but made clear he was in pain and needed an ambulance. Internal call logs seen by the BBC show that at this point Ken was triaged as a category two emergency, meaning paramedics should arrive in 18 minutes, on average. About 15 minutes later, Ken called 999 for a second time. An internal ambulance service log seen by the BBC shows that South Western Ambulance Service was indeed busy that night. It talks about "high demand" in the Gloucester area, with more than 60 patients waiting for help, some for more than eight hours. Another hour passed before Ken made his third and final call to 999. It was clear now that he was in serious pain. He felt "terrible sick" and said his "breathing is going too". "I need an ambulance because I'm going to fade away quite quickly," he said. The same reply came back: "The ambulance service is just under a lot of pressure at the moment... we are doing our best." An ambulance finally got to Kenneth Shadbolt's house at 08:10 that morning, four hours after that final call. Ken died at 14:21 that afternoon, with the cause of death given as a "very large subdural haematoma" or bleed on the brain. His son Jerry Shadbolt said: "The doctors were saying his injuries were non-survivable but would they have been non-survivable if he'd arrived at hospital four hours earlier? I'd like an answer to that question. "He was on his own and he knew he was on his own. He must have felt abandoned and alone on his bedroom floor. That's the most troubling part of it for me." Read full story Source: BBC News, 16 June 2022
  25. News Article
    More than 380,000 patients waited more than 12 hours in A&E last year, new figures show, amid claims ‘misleading’ public data masks the true scale of the problem. A Royal College of Emergency Medicine report shows 381,991 people across 74 NHS trusts waited half a day or longer from the time they arrived at hospital in 2021. The figures are 14 times higher than the official numbers published by the NHS – which say 25,553 people waited more than 12 hours during the same period at the same trusts – due to the different ways waiting times are measured. While NHS England publishes data every month, it only shows how long patients have waited after a decision by doctors to admit them. Experts claim this is misleading and have called for the NHS to publish the figures from point of arrival instead. It comes after The Independent revealed leaked data in May, showing that more than 3,000 patients a day were regularly facing 12-hour waits in the first four months of 2022. Dr Adrian Boyle, RCEM vice president, said the new figures were “staggering” and “make clear that measuring 12-hour waits from decision to admit masks the reality facing patients and staff. Read full story Source: The Independent, 14 June 2022
×
×
  • Create New...