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Found 963 results
  1. News Article
    The government’s national review of mental health hospitals must urgently address the “lack of sympathy and compassion” towards patients if safety is to improve, the health ombudsman has said. Rob Berhens said the investigation, prompted by The Independent’s reporting on deaths and abuse of vulnerable patients, must look at three key issues, including a lack of empathy for those with mental health challenges, a lack of resources and poor working conditions for staff. Health Secretary Steve Barclay announced last week that a new safety body, the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSIB), would look into the care of young people, examine staffing levels and scrutinise the quality of care within mental health units. Mr Berhens said: “I trust [HSIB] to be able to understand what are the key issues, they’re about the lack of sympathy and compassion for people who have mental health challenges, which to me is a human rights issue." Read full story Source: The Independent, 1 July 2023
  2. News Article
    GP services "will collapse in Wales and the NHS will follow" soon after unless urgent support is provided, the British Medical Association (BMA) has warned. As patient levels rise, numbers of GP surgeries and doctors are falling amid inadequate resources and unsustainable workloads, BMA Cymru Wales has claimed. It has written to the Welsh government, urging more funding and staff help. The Welsh government said it was acting to cut pressure on GPs and increasing services by community pharmacists. Launching its Save Our Surgeries campaign, the BMA said the number of GP practices in Wales had decreased by 18% in the past decade from 470 to 386. Read full story Source: BBC News, 28 June 2023
  3. News Article
    The Home Office has been accused of abandoning 55 asylum seekers with a range of severe disabilities and life-limiting conditions at a former care home in an Essex seaside town. The asylum seekers, who fled various conflict zones including Sudan and Afghanistan, are struggling with a range of health conditions they have suffered from since childhood or life-changing injuries suffered in war zones. One told the Guardian: “Everybody is suffering in this place. It used to be a care home but now there is no care. We are free to come and go but to me, this place feels like an open prison. We have just been left here and abandoned.” Those living in the former care home are struggling with health conditions including loss of limbs, blindness, deafness and mobility issues requiring a wheelchair – although not all have been able to access one. At least eight are paraplegic. They were placed in the former care home, which opened in November, by Home Office officials. It is staffed like a standard Home Office asylum seeker hotel with security guards and reception staff but does not have trained care workers or nurses there as part of the contract. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 June 2023
  4. News Article
    A major acute site has issued a ‘full capacity’ alert to staff, just days before the services are due to move into a replacement hospital with fewer beds. In an email seen by HSJ, medical leaders at the Royal Liverpool Hospital alerted staff to extreme pressures on the site, with ambulances being held outside and “no space” in resuscitation areas. The RLH currently has around 685 beds, but at the end of this month the services are due to start transferring to the long-awaited new Royal Liverpool, on an adjacent site. The new hospital has 640 beds, and several frontline staff have told HSJ this is causing significant concern, with the current services under so much pressure. One senior source at the trust said there has been a push since 2017 to reduce inpatients beds at the current hospital, to try and match the capacity of the new build, but this hasn’t been achieved. They added: “Surgeons are concerned that their beds will get filled with medical outliers. The whole issue is all the patients who are waiting for social care. It was supposed to have been sorted by now.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 September 2022
  5. News Article
    About 15,000 nurses in Minnesota walked off the job Monday to protest understaffing and overwork — marking the largest strike of private-sector nurses in U.S. history. Slated to last three days, the strike spotlights nationwide nursing shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that often result in patients not receiving adequate care. Minnesota nurses charge that some units go without a lead nurse on duty and that nurses fresh out of school are delegated assignments typically held by more experienced nurses, across some 16 hospitals where strikes are expected. The nurses are demanding a role in staffing plans, changes to shift scheduling practices and higher wages. “I can’t give my patients the care they deserve,” said Chris Rubesch, the vice president of the Minnesota Nurses Association and a nurse at Essentia Health in Duluth. “Call lights go unanswered. Patients should only be waiting for a few seconds or minutes if they’ve soiled themselves or their oxygen came unplugged or they need to go to the bathroom, but that can take 10 minutes or more. Those are things that can’t wait.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: Washington Post, 12 September 2022
  6. News Article
    Liz Truss has been warned against “fantasy predictions” that the NHS can return to normal without radical change and was told that “unacceptable standards” are being normalised. In a rare political intervention, the professional standards body for the UK’s 220,000 doctors agreed that the NHS was routinely letting down patients. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said politicians must be prepared for radical changes to save the health service. Closing smaller hospitals, accepting that routine dentistry cannot be free for everyone and a return of Covid volunteers to allow doctors to treat more patients were all suggested by the head of the academy. The academy released a report that declared the NHS was in crisis, writing: “The system is providing increasing proportions of care or services which are sub-standard, threaten patient safety, and should not be acceptable in a country with the resources that we have in the United Kingdom. If we do not act with urgency, we risk permanently normalising the unacceptable standards we now witness daily.” The report sets out a series of recommendations for reform, including boosting staff numbers, reforming social care and spending more on technology. Helen Stokes-Lampard, the academy’s chairwoman, said patients were facing a “dismal winter” and that politicians must take difficult decisions. “If we don’t make changes it will inevitably deteriorate further,” she said. “The demand isn’t going away, the pressure isn’t going away, which is why the challenge for our government and for our whole society is to confront these issues and have a difficult conversation.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 9 September 2022
  7. News Article
    GPs have warned of a ‘tsunami of demand’ this winter as patient contacts surged 200% during the pandemic. One of the largest GP providers in the UK, Modality Partnership, told The Independent it received 4.8 million calls from patients in one year alone with around a quarter going unanswered every day. The provider, which covers 500,000 patients across the country, said its practices were now working above “safe levels” with 50 appointments a day per GP, far higher than the 35 advised by the British Medical Association. Speaking with The Independent, Vincent Sai, chief executive and partner at Modality said the new health secretary Therese Coffey must “not point fingers” and “not find a scapegoat” as “every part of the system is under pressure. Every player in the health system is under the cosh.” Dr Sai said: “We believe patient contacts have increased 200 per cent, over the last few years. The expectation is that GP practices have maybe four to five patient contacts per year, but if you just look at just the number of phone calls alone, it’s showing that it’s much more now. “So something is broken somewhere...there’s more work, there are fewer people. People say I can’t get access to my GP and the hypothesis is they’re just lazy and not working, but it’s not the case.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 7 September 2022
  8. News Article
    Over 50 new surgical hubs will open across the country to help bust the Covid-19 backlogs and offer hundreds of thousands more patients quicker access to vital procedures, Steve Barclay, has announced. These hubs will provide at least 100 more operating theatres and over 1,000 beds so people get the surgery they need. And they will deliver almost two million extra routine operations to reduce waiting lists over the next three years, backed by £1.5billion in government funding. They will focus mainly on providing high-volume, low-complexity surgery, as previously recommended by the Royal College of Surgeons of England, with particular emphasis on ophthalmology, general surgery, trauma and orthopaedics, gynaecology, ear nose and throat, and urology. Located on existing hospital sites, the surgical hubs will bring together skills and expertise of staff under one roof – reducing waiting times for some of the most-common procedures such as cataract surgeries and hip replacements. Improving quality and efficiency will mean patients have shorter waits for surgery, will be more likely to go home on the same day, and will be less likely to need additional treatment. And, as the hubs are separated from emergency services, surgical beds are kept free for patients waiting for planned operations, reducing the risk of short-notice cancellations and improving infection control. Read full story Source: Building Better Healthcare, 5 September 2022
  9. 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
  10. News Article
    Health secretary Steve Barclay says trust chief executives should be held accountable for ambulance handover delays in a ‘fair’ way that recognises factors outside their control. Mr Barclay made a wide ranging speech at a Policy Exchange event on Thursday. However, the content of the speech was much less radical than earlier press reports in which it was suggested he would tell the NHS to “scrap targets”, “declare war on pointless pen-pushers”, and deprioritise “cancer, maternity and mental health”. Last month, the health secretary summoned the chief executives of six of the NHS trusts which are recording the longest waits for ambulance handovers at their emergency departments. Mr Barclay was asked by HSJ what the consequences would be for leaders who failed to improve the situation. He said: “It’s not about blaming the chief executives, it’s about understanding what are their challenges and how do we then get clarity on that. “Once we’ve agreed on that, then you can have performance management to hold individual chiefs to [account on] the bits that are within their control, distinct from bits that may be the ambulance trust’s or others in the system.” He said the government and NHS England would ask what was “within the chief exec’s control” and how a trust’s performance compared to that of its peers? Trusts would be asked to “comply” with best practice or explain why they were not. The Department of Health and Social Care and NHSE would then be able to decide “what are the things where it [the trust] needs wider support?” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 2 September 2022
  11. News Article
    On a Thursday in mid-August, the doors of a hospital's emergency department two hours west of Toronto were shut. A note posted on the front said the ER was closed for the day. It would reopen the following morning at 08:00, but close again for the evening. Patients who needed urgent care were asked to go to nearby hospitals - a 15- to 35-minute drive away. It was the ninth time since April that the Huron Public Healthcare Alliance - a network of four hospitals serving around 150,000 people in western Ontario - had to temporarily close or cut back hours at one of its emergency departments. Canada is one of the richest countries in the world. Its universal publicly funded healthcare system has been touted by progressive politicians in the US, the country's southern neighbour, who see it as a needed alternative to an American system where millions remain uninsured. But in recent months, Canada's system has been described by workers and hospital executives as being in a state of "crisis". That includes struggling emergency rooms. Toronto ER physician Dr Raghu Venugopal said he has seen stretchers lining the hallways, occupied by patients suffering from ailments like a broken hip or abdominal pains. On some days, those patients may wait anywhere from two to four days to be admitted to hospital, all while a team of two nurses tends to a total of 50 to 60 patients on the unit. Other patients are being examined in the waiting room because the lack of staff has forced parts of the ER to close, meaning there is limited space for doctors to see them privately. "We are in a standard-less void where anything goes, and it is shocking," Dr Venugopal said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 2 September 2022
  12. News Article
    More than two-thirds of trusts have been forced to suspend or pause a high-profile service improvement aimed at reducing neonatal and maternal deaths, because of widespread staffing shortages. HSJ research revealed a majority of trusts have been unable to implement the continuity of carer maternity model, after they were told to look again at whether it could be safely implemented. The model intends to give women “dedicated support” from the same midwifery team throughout their pregnancy, with a 2016 review saying it would reduce infant and maternal mortality rates and improve care more generally. It is particularly aimed at improving care for patients from minority ethnic groups and those with other risk factors, and has been championed by Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, NHS England’s chief midwifery officer. Key targets around the model were included in the 2019 NHS long-term plan. However, there is consensus nationally that it can only be rolled out safely where there are adequate numbers of staff to do so – otherwise the risks outweigh the benefits. Earlier this year, the final Ockenden report into maternity care failings at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust was critical of the model, and said it should be suspended until trusts have enough staff to meet “safe minimum requirements on all shifts”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 30 August 2022 Read more about the continuity of care maternity model on the hub
  13. News Article
    Thousands of vulnerable people are suffering inadequate care as severe staffing shortages in previously good care homes push operators to break rules and put residents at risk. A wave of inspections has revealed the human impact of a worsening nationwide staffing crisis, with people being left in their rooms 24 hours a day, denied showers for over a week, enduring assaults from fellow residents, and left soaking in their own urine. Stretched staff have described scrambling to help residents with buzzers going off and fear the squeeze on their time is dangerous. Analysis by the Guardian revealed that staff shortages were identified as a key problem in three-quarters of all the care homes in England where the Care Quality Commission regulator had cut their rating from “good” before Covid-19 to “inadequate” this summer. A further 10% of homes whose rankings slumped had enough staff, but failed to recruit safely, either not taking references properly, carrying out criminal records checks, or training staff adequately. Families said the staffing shortages had reached “crisis point”. “Older people are paying a heavy price for these failings, as poor care robs them of their dignity, breaks their will and makes them feel unsafe in their own home,” said Helen Wildbore, director of the Relatives and Residents Association. “Older people need much more than empty slogans from the next prime minister about ‘fixing social care’.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 21 August 2022
  14. News Article
    Nearly 38,000 vital follow-up appointments with mental health patients were missed at the time when they were most at risk of suicide, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has said. The medical body has called for “urgent action” to ensure more people are seen for follow-ups within 72 hours of their discharge from inpatient care, to prevent them from falling “through the cracks when they are so vulnerable”. The risk of suicide is highest on the second and third days after leaving a mental health ward, but 37,999 follow-up appointments with patients were not made within this timeframe in England between April 2020 and May 2022. According to NHS data, of the 160,430 instances when patients were eligible for follow-up care within 72 hours after discharge from acute adult mental health care, only three-quarters (76%) took place within that period. The Royal College of Psychiatrists is calling for more trained specialists to check on those perceived to be at risk, which they say requires more staffing and funding. The president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Dr Adrian James, said: “We simply can’t afford to let people fall through the cracks at a time when they are so vulnerable. It’s vital that our mental health services are properly staffed and funded to offer proper follow-up care and help prevent suicides. “Staff are working as hard as they can to provide high-quality care, but it’s clear that current resources are not enough to meet these targets. We need urgent action to tackle the workforce crisis and achieve the suicide prevention goals set out in the NHS long-term plan.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 August 2022
  15. 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
  16. 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
  17. News Article
    Almost a third of acute trusts have been identified by NHS England as being ‘at risk’ of missing key targets for electives and cancer recovery, with some facing “periodic calls between ministers and CEOs”, HSJ can reveal. NHS England has identified 39 acute trusts at the most risk of missing the targets of having no patients waiting 78 weeks or more for elective treatment by April 2023, and returning the 62-day cancer waiting list to pre-pandemic levels by March 2023. HSJ can reveal the full lists of 19 trusts placed in “tier one” – the most at-risk category – and 20 in “tier two” (see lists below). The “at risk” trusts represent 31% of the acute providers in England, with many of them among the lowest performers in the country for elective and cancer recovery. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 19 August 2022
  18. 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
  19. News Article
    Questions are being asked why the government is sticking to its cap on medical and dentistry places. A shortage of doctors and other medical staff has been described as the biggest challenge facing the NHS. But the number of places at UK medical schools are capped - in England this year there are 7,500 places. England's Education Secretary James Cleverly told the BBC that you can't just "flick a switch" to increase the capacity to train more doctors. Medicine is one of a handful of courses where numbers are limited by the government, because the cost is heavily subsidised. In 2020 and 2021 the government lifted the cap on numbers, which last year led to more than 10,000 places being accepted. But this year the cap in England is being reintroduced. Mr Cleverly told the BBC that the nature of highly technical, vocational courses like medicine meant increasing the number of places was far from straightforward. "To increase those numbers you would also need to increase the capacity in training institutions, both in universities and in hospitals. "It is not something you can just flick a switch and significantly increase the capacity to train. "The increases have got to be funded, they are technical and expensive courses and we need to understand the balance of requirements between these courses and other courses that the government is supporting financially." Read full story Source: BBC News, 18 August 2022
  20. News Article
    Dozens of referrals to specialist care for women with serious mental health problems during or after pregnancy are being turned down because no bed was available, data collected by HSJ reveals. HSJ submitted freedom of information requests to 19 trusts running mother and baby units (MBUs) – which are inpatient services where women who experience serious mental health problems during or after pregnancy can stay with their child – asking for the “total number of referrals… which could not be admitted because no bed was available”. Although all of the 19 trusts HSJ sent freedom of information requests to responded, many said they did not hold this information. However, five – Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Foundation Trust, Essex Partnership University FT, Greater Manchester Mental Health FT, Hertfordshire Partnership University FT, and Nottinghamshire Healthcare FT – together identified 197 referrals which were rejected. Greater Manchester identified a further three which were turned down in the calendar year 2022, although it did not specify which financial year this was. Several experts told HSJ the figures reflected a lack of capacity for mothers with serious mental health problems. Maternal Mental Health Alliance campaign manager Karen Middleton said MBUs offered “the best outcomes” for new mothers who needed inpatient treatment". Ms Middleton continued: “When a much-needed MBU bed isn’t available, women instead face admission to general adult psychiatric wards, separating them from their newborn babies at a crucially important time for relationship development. These wards lack appropriate facilities and expertise to support postnatal mothers with their specific physical and emotional needs.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 16 August 2022
  21. 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
  22. News Article
    Almost 200 maternity units in England will be inspected by the Care Quality Commission amid fears for mothers and babies’ safety and concerns that improvements are not happening fast enough. The commission is taking the unusual step as NHS England faces accusations of pressuring hospitals to reorganise the way midwives work when they lack the staff to do it safely. The new model of care, which is designed to provide mothers with a dedicated midwife throughout pregnancy, has been introduced only partially across the NHS, leading to a two-tier service in which hospital wards are left short of staff and women face potentially dangerous delays. Under “continuity of carer”, midwives work in teams and are on call for specific mothers when they go into labour. But this can leave hospital wards understaffed and women not included in the programme waiting for a midwife. NHS England is pushing hospitals to make this the default model of care by March 2024 despite a warning by Donna Ockenden, who led the inquiry into baby deaths at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust, and who said in her final report that introduction of the new model should be suspended if services lack enough staff. Read full story Source: The Times, 14 August 2022 Further reading - Midwifery continuity of carer resources on the hub.
  23. News Article
    Last month saw the highest number of ambulance callouts for life-threatening conditions since records began, NHS England officials say. There were more than 85,000 category one calls, for situations like cardiac arrests and people stopping breathing. The heatwave could have been one reason for increased demand, but experts say hospitals already face immense pressures. Nearly 30,000 patients waited more than 12 hours to be admitted to hospital. The number is up 33% on the previous month and the highest since records began in 2010. Richard Murray, chief executive of The King's Fund said the pressure on hospitals was also being felt right across the health and social care system. He added: "At the end of July, 13,014 people were still in hospital beds despite being medically fit to be discharged, often due to a lack of available social care support. The challenges affecting the NHS cannot be solved without addressing the issues in social care." Read full story Source BBC News, 12 August 2022
  24. News Article
    Deaths, staff shortages and a culture of life-threatening self-harm are exposing deep fears about the quality of mental health care in hospitals for children and young people. Since 2019, at least 20 patients aged 18 or under have died in NHS or privately-run units, the BBC has found. A further 26 have died within a year of leaving units, amid claims of a lack of ongoing community support. The NHS said it had "invested record amounts... to meet record demand". Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) units look after about 4,000 patients with many different diagnoses each year. The aim is to help them recover over a period of weeks or months through specialist care. Some patients are in and out of the units for years. The BBC has also heard serious claims regarding the unsafe discharge of patients sent home from CAMHS hospitals. Several former patients told the BBC they had serious self-harm incidents or tried to take their own life within days of returning home. Parents have described being on "suicide watch" 24 hours a day, to ensure their child's safety. Read full story Source: BBC News, 9 August 2022
  25. News Article
    Armed police are being sent to save the lives of people in cardiac arrest because ambulances “can’t cope” with demand, The Independent has revealed. Officers are spending up to a third of their time on non-policing matters, a watchdog has warned, including responding to mental health crises and transporting patients to A&E as ambulance services face a “chronic crisis situation”. Andy Cooke, HM chief inspector of constabulary, said that firearms officers have been responding to pleas from struggling NHS colleagues to respond to cardiac arrests. He told The Independent that police are becoming the “first, last and only resort” as NHS services buckle under strain, taking them away from tackling crime at a time when recorded offences are at a record high in England and Wales. Mr Cooke, the former chief constable of Merseyside Police, added: “Recently, officers in armed response vehicles (ARVs) were being sent to reports of people who were having cardiac arrests because the ambulance service couldn’t cope with the demand, because they’re trained in first aid and to use defibrillators." “The ambulance service contacted the police to say ‘we’ve got this heart patient and we haven’t got anyone to send’." “Being first, last and only resort, the police will go. It’s right that they did go but that hides the problems we’ve got in the rest of the system.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 8 August 2022
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