Jump to content

Search the hub

Showing results for tags 'Lack of resources'.

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
    • Patient Safety Standards
    • 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

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 963 results
  1. News Article
    When 85-year-old Koulla fell at home, her family immediately rang for an ambulance. She was in agonising pain - she had broken her hip. It was around 8pm. It took another 14 hours for an ambulance to get to her, leaving her pregnant granddaughter to care for her through the night. When they arrived the crews were able to give her pain relief and quickly transported her to the Royal Cornwall Hospital. But there the wait continued - there were around 30 ambulances queuing to handover patients to A&E staff. It was another 26 hours before she was taken inside to A&E. She then faced many hours in A&E before being taken for surgery. Koulla's daughter, Marianna Flint, 53, said: "It was awful. You feel helpless because you're giving your trust over to them to look after a family member who's in agony and who needs surgery." She has since received a written apology from the Royal Cornwall for the care provided to her mother in August. Ms Flint said: "I almost feel sorry for those looking after her. It's not down to them. There was no room inside to accept her in." Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 December 2022
  2. News Article
    Ambulance services across England are set to go on strike before Christmas as thousands of paramedics and call handlers voted for action. The announcement by union Unison comes as the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) confirmed 100,000 nurses across England, Wales and Northern Ireland will walk out on 15 and 20 December. The union is calling for action on pay and a big increase in staff numbers, warning that unless these things happen, services will continue to decline. Saffron Cordery, interim chief of NHS Providers, said on BBC radio four: “I think in terms of the ambulance strike, we know the challenges already of not having enough paramedics, call handlers available, because we’ve seen the challenges to ambulance handover times that we have at the moment in terms of not being able to transfer patients from ambulances into A&E departments and the challenges that brings when they can’t get back out on the road. “Additional challenges on top of that, I think, will make response times incredibly stretched.” Sources told The Independent that one option could be for services to maintain levels of staff to be able to respond to the most serious calls - category one and two calls - and deprioritise the less serious category three and four calls. This has previously been negotiated during smaller-scale strikes. However, senior sources suggested that on a larger scale it would be hard to not respond to category three calls, which might include an older person who has fallen. It is also unclear how 999 call centres would operate during strikes as this work would likely count as life-saving emergency care, The Independent understands. Read full story Source: The Independent, 2 December 2022
  3. News Article
    Intensive care doctors in Germany have warned that hospital paediatric units in the country are stretched to breaking point in part due to rising cases of respiratory infections among infants. The intensive care association DIVI said the seasonal rise in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases and a shortage of nurses was causing a “catastrophic situation” in hospitals. RSV is a common, highly contagious virus that infects nearly all babies and toddlers by the age of two, some of whom can fall seriously ill. Experts say the easing of coronavirus pandemic restrictions means RSV is affecting a larger number of babies and children, whose immune systems aren’t primed to fend it off. Cases of RSV and other respiratory illnesses have also increased in the UK and in the US, which is also suffering from a shortages of antivirals and antibiotics. In Germany, hospital doctors are having to make difficult decisions about which children to assign to limited intensive care beds. In some cases, children with RSV or other serious conditions are getting transferred to hospitals elsewhere in Germany with spare capacity. “If the forecasts are right, then things will get significantly more acute in the coming days and week,” Sebastian Brenner, head of the paediatric intensive care unit at University Hospital Dresden, told German news channel n-tv. “We see this in France, for example, and in Switzerland. If that happens, then there will be bottlenecks when it comes to treatment.” Others warned that, in certain cases, doctors already were unable to provide the urgent care some children need. “The situation is so precarious that we genuinely have to say children are dying because we can’t treat them any more,” Dr. Michael Sasse, head of paediatric intensive care at Hanover’s MHH University hospital, said. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 December 2022
  4. News Article
    More than 1,000 referrals to admit very sick or premature babies to neonatal units were rejected in the last year due to a lack of beds, data obtained by HSJ has revealed. Nineteen trusts turned down a total of 2,721 requests to admit a baby to their level three neonatal intensive care unit – those for the most serious cases – specifically due to a lack of a bed, between 2019-20 and 2021-22, with 1,345 such refusals taking place in 2021-22. Experts told HSJ the issue – which appears to have led to families having to travel very long distances from their homes – was due to a shortage of staff, especially nurses, meaning insufficient beds (normally referral to as cots in neonatal care) can be opened. A British Association of Perinatal Medicine spokesperson told HSJ: “Neonatal intensive care units should run at less than 80% occupancy on average to allow for peaks and troughs in activity. There are a significant number which are having to run over that capacity limit which can cause flow problems – we’re a bit like an A&E that can’t stack the ambulances outside – once the baby is there, it has to come and we’re not able to control those admissions.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 1 December 2022
  5. News Article
    A woman spent “four hours watching her mother dying on the floor waiting for an ambulance in a journey that should take just ten minutes”, the Irish Oireachtas Health Committee was told today. Committee deputy chairman Sean Crowe said the “woman died on her way to hospital”. Her bereaved daughter was left with the memory of her mother “gasping for breath”, he told Health Minister Stephen Donnelly. He said ambulance delays, compounded by them having to wait backed up for hours outside hospitals because of a lack of trolleys in emergency departments, were leading to serious consequences. In response the minister said: “The national ambulance service needs significant additional funding and that is happening now.” He said there is work under way to rebuild ambulance bases as well as add to the fleet, along with hiring more advanced paramedics. He added: “We need to recognise response times from ambulances are not where they need to be and vary around the country. It is not yet where it needs to be and some areas are worse than others.” Read full story Source: Independent Ireland, 30 November 2022
  6. News Article
    More than 200 people who died last week in England are estimated to have been affected by problems with urgent and emergency care, according to the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. Dr Adrian Boyle, who is also a consultant in emergency medicine, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that a failure to address problems discharging patients to social care was a “massive own goal”. Ambulances had become “wards on wheels” while patients waited to get hospital treatment, Boyle said, adding that those most at risk “are the people that the ambulance can’t go to because it’s stuck outside the emergency department”. His comments came as the NHS launched 42 “winter war rooms” across England, designed to use data to respond to pressures on the health system. When asked about the project, Boyle said it was too early to tell if it was a good idea, adding: “You can paralyse yourself with analysis, it really is actually more simple and about building increased capacity.” He said the problem was best solved by focusing on hospital discharge and social care. “Fixing this starts at the back door of the hospital and being able to use our beds properly,” he said. “At the moment, there are 13,000 people waiting in hospitals, about 10% of the bed base, who are waiting to be discharged either to home, with a little bit more support, or to a care facility. And that’s just a massive own goal. We just need to reform the interface between acute hospitals and social care.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 1 December 2022
  7. News Article
    More than 11,000 ambulances a week are caught in queues of at least an hour outside A&E units in England, a BBC News analysis shows. The total - the highest since records began, in 2010 - means one in seven crews faced delays on this scale by late November. Paramedics warned the problems were causing patients severe harm. One family told BBC News an 85-year-old woman with a broken hip had waited 40 hours before a hospital admission. She waited an "agonising" 14 hours for the ambulance to arrive and then 26 in the ambulance outside hospital. When finally admitted, to the Royal Cornwall Hospital, which has apologised for her care, she had surgery. Both ambulance response times and A&E waits have hit their worst levels on record in all parts of the UK in recent months. In Cornwall, patients facing emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes are now waiting more than two hours on average for an ambulance. The target is 18 minutes. They are thought to be among the worst delays in the country but none of England's ambulance services is close to the target, while Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are all missing their targets. Read full story Source: BBC News, 1 December 2022
  8. News Article
    Five-year-old Yusuf Nazir died from pneumonia on Monday. It is reported an infection had spread to his lungs and caused multiple organ failure, resulting in several cardiac arrests. His family said they struggled to get the poorly child admitted to hospital in the run-up to his death, as they were told there were not enough beds or doctors available. His uncle, Zaheer Ahmed, said he had “begged” Rotherham General Hospital to take his nephew in. He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain a GP said Yusuf had “severe tonsilitis” and needed intravenous antibiotics - but the doctor had been told not to refer anyone to the ward and they needed to go to A&E instead. Mr Ahmed said he rang the hospital himself. “I begged them. I begged them. I’ve never begged for anything in my life and I begged them to help him,” the tearful uncle said. He said he told them Yusuf needed treatment but was told there were no beds. He claimed he was told: “What do you want me to do? Just get a bed out of the air? We’ve got kids waiting.” They say they drove him to the emergency department of Rotherham General Hospital the next day when his condition did not improve. The family waited for hours before Yusuf was seen but he was sent home even though the doctor treating him had said “it was the worst case of tonsillitis he had ever seen”, according to Mr Ahmed. Yusuf’s condition worsened while he was at home and his parents called an ambulance and insisted he was taken to Sheffield Children’s Hospital, where he later died. Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust has launched an investigation into Yusuf’s care. Read full story Source: The Independent. 29 November 2022
  9. News Article
    Plans have been drawn up to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed this winter by encouraging patients to “behave in ways they’ve not experienced before” and cut down on in-person GP visits, the Guardian can reveal. An advertising campaign devised by M&C Saatchi, awarded a contract by NHS England worth up to £28.6m, suggested ways people could be encouraged to settle for a virtual appointment or visit a pharmacist instead. To help reduce the mounting pressures facing medics, documents show the agency also advised patients should be told that seeking help via alternative routes instead of rushing to A&E would help the NHS “work better for everyone”. The three-year contract is for the ad campaign “Help Us Help You”, which seeks to change people’s behaviour when accessing healthcare to reduce pressures on the NHS and maintain capacity. Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said patients were already cutting back on in-person GP appointments – “not because they don’t need them but they’re finding it impossible to get one”. He told the Guardian: “Among those millions of patients who can’t get an appointment when they need it, there will be problems which go undiagnosed until it’s too late". Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 November 2022
  10. News Article
    NHS England has warned trusts not to compromise on fire safety when using corridor spaces to treat patients, amid growing pressure to accommodate more patients. It comes as emergency departments face increasing pressure from national and regional officials to find more space for patients this winter – even when they are deemed full to capacity – to reduce ambulance handover delays. The guidance, issued earlier this month, says trusts should complete new fire safety risk assessments before bringing any new part of a hospital into use for patient care, or extending the capacity of an existing area. It also said trusts have a legal duty to ensure escape routes are kept clear. It added: “As we continue to find extra capacity in the estate by newly using, or re-using, parts of hospitals for patient treatment or care, or increasing the capacity of existing areas, we would like to remind you of how any change of use of areas may affect fire safety requirements. “Under no circumstances must fire compliance be compromised on sites which have been changed.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 29 November 2022
  11. News Article
    NHS England’s chief executive has admitted the service is behind on its commitment to increase elective activity to 130% of pre-covid levels by 2025, saying the recovery would need to be ‘reprofiled’ to catch up after this year. Amanda Pritchard told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee that NHS England would need to “re-profile some of the [elective recovery] trajectories”, as progress this year was being hampered by a combination of higher than expected covid rates, flu, workforce challenges and industrial action. She later added that the 2025 target could “theoretically” be missed, but stressed “we are a very long way from that” and indicated she believed the NHS could catch up in future years. Elective recovery plans agreed between NHSE and government last autumn said activity would recover to 110% of pre-covid levels in 2022-23. Yet published data shows many systems have so far been carrying out fewer procedures than before covid in most months. Asked by the committee’s chair Meg Hillier if she was confident the NHS would hit the 2025 activity target, first agreed for the 2021 spending settlement, Ms Pritchard replied: “I think at the moment we are absolutely aiming [to hit the target] at the end of that period of time, but we do recognise that we are going to need to re-profile trajectories to get there.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 28 November 2022
  12. News Article
    Hospitals may not be able to provide key elements of healthcare such as urgent surgery, chemotherapy and kidney dialysis during the forthcoming strikes by nurses, NHS bosses have said. Trusts may also have to stop discharging patients, postpone urgent diagnostic tests and temporarily withdraw services to people undergoing a mental health crisis. Executives have been warned that industrial action by nurses in their pay dispute with the government could mean that a range of important, and in some cases time-critical, services to seriously ill patients may have to be scaled back or suspended altogether. NHS England bosses have raised that possibility in a letter sent on Monday to hospitals and other care providers ahead of crunch talks with the Royal College of Nursing later this week. At that meeting they will try to agree what areas of care will be hit on Thursday 15 and Tuesday 20 December, and which will continue as normal because they are covered by “derogations” – agreed exemptions to the action. The letter sets out a list of 12 areas of care and some non-clinical activity in hospitals, such as food supply, which could be affected if agreement is not reached with the nurses’ union. Eight of those involve direct patient care, three involve support services in NHS trusts and the other involves “system leadership and management to oversee safe care” on strike days. NHS England’s letter sets out 10 other types of vital care, mainly involving life or death scenarios, headed “derogations not needed”, which they hope to agree with the RCN to go ahead as normal. These include A&E care, services in intensive care units and emergency operating theatres as well as maternity services, including the delivery of babies, psychiatric intensive care, time-critical organ transplants and palliative and end of life care. Meanwhile, the chief executive of NHS England has insisted patients will not have procedures cancelled at the last minute due to the nurses’ strikes, but warned some care would have to be delayed. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 28 November 2022
  13. News Article
    Lack of beds in the NHS and social care sector have been highlighted by the case of an 81-year-old woman discharged home at night, her family said. Janice Field attended Colchester Hospital in Essex with a suspected heart attack. She was returned to her flat at midnight, despite having no home care at that time of day. The hospital trust said it focused on keeping patients safe and was "sorry to hear about the concerns raised". Ms Field was checked out at the hospital last week and deemed fit to go home, but her family said she should have stayed in hospital overnight, or be found a community care bed. Her daughter-in-law, Sarah Field, a qualified nurse, said: "To discharge an 81-year-old lady and have them having to be transferred in the middle of the night is totally unacceptable. "But the nurse we spoke to was emphatic. She was desperate. She said, 'no, we have no beds. This has got to happen. She's clinically fit. She has got to go'. "The NHS is broken, under-resourced and not fit for purpose. This is not the fault of those that work in it, but the fault of the system." Read full story Source: BBC News, 26 November 2022
  14. News Article
    People suffering from mental illness are increasingly struggling to access help at every level of the NHS – from record numbers facing “unacceptable” delays in referrals to patients waiting up to eight days in A&E for a hospital bed. Figures seen by The Independent show almost four times as many people are waiting more than 12 hours in emergency departments as two years ago. In the community, more than 16,000 adults and 20,000 children who should receive NHS care are unable to access vital services each month. Nearly 80% of those eligible for counselling on the health service are left waiting more than three months for a second appointment, which is when treatment usually begins. Health leaders say they are “deeply concerned” by the lack of resources available to handle the rise in demand – and warned that the cost of living crisis would exacerbate the issue further. Monica Smith went to A&E at Lewisham last month after her mental health deteriorated when her medication ran out and she was unable to get more. The 32-year-old said: “I was told, ‘We can’t find any beds – there’s no bed in the whole country or the whole region, so we’re going to have a bed on A&E and hopefully you’ll get a bed in the morning.’” Monica started hallucinating and was given medication to calm her down, but in the morning there was still no bed. Doctors tried to send her home, she said, but crisis services assessed her three times over the following days and each time decided she was too unwell. Instead, Monica stayed in an annex off A&E with other mental health patients. She said: “I was on this, like, mattress, like a mental health mattress on the floor.” Read full story Source: The Independent, 27 November 2022
  15. News Article
    A woman who struggled to access night-time care for her dying father has told the BBC he "shouldn't have been expected to die in office hours". Tracey Bennett said she was "completely lost" when her dad Michael needed help. Early in 2021, Mrs Bennett, 54, from Doncaster, moved in with her dad, 76-year-old Michael Woodward, to care for him in the last stages of his cancer. One night he had a fall. Mrs Bennett was able to help him back up but turned to the local NHS palliative care phone line for help, only to find it closed. Although she did not feel her father should be in a hospital, she called 999 as she felt she had no-one else to turn to. He died in the early hours of the next morning. "In his hour of need I feel I let my dad down," she said. "He shouldn't have been expected to die in office hours." Almost 70% of the UK does not have a consistent 24-hour help-line for the terminally ill, research suggests. And 27% of these areas do not have a designated phone line, the study funded by Marie Curie found. Ruth Driscoll, from the charity, said the research painted "a bleak picture of out-of-hours care in many areas of the UK". Read full story Source: BBC News, 28 November 2022
  16. News Article
    The NHS in England is facing a “perfect winter storm” with 10 times more people in hospital with flu than this time last year, and ambulances experiencing deadly delays when arriving at A&E with sick patients. There were an average of 344 patients a day in hospitals in England with flu last week, more than 10 times the number at the beginning of last December. And as many as 3 in 10 patients arriving at hospitals by ambulance are waiting at least 30 minutes to be handed over to A&E teams. Health chiefs say the crisis is leading to deaths. The figures on flu and ambulance delays were published by NHS England on Thursday and offered the first weekly snapshot of how hospitals are performing this season. Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents the healthcare system in England, said: “These figures really hammer home just how stretched services already are as we head into a perfect winter storm. Significantly higher numbers of people are in hospital because of flu compared to this time last year, coupled with the fact that Covid-19 has not gone away.” He added: “The life-saving safety net that NHS ambulance services provide is being severely compromised by these unnecessary delays, and patients are dying and coming to harm as a result on a daily basis.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 24 November 2022
  17. News Article
    Nine acute trusts accounted for a third of all ‘hours lost’ to ambulance handover delays last week, according to new data. The first NHS England winter sitrep data showed wide variation between providers on ambulance handover performance, with a small number of providers accounting for a huge proportion of delays. There were nine trusts where, for each ambulance arrival in the week to 20 November, an average (mean) of more than an hour was lost to handover delays. The providers accounted for around 7,000 hours lost, 33% the national total, despite only accounting for 7% of ambulance arrivals. At University Hospitals Plymouth an average of 2.3 hours were lost. The other trusts were; Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals; East and North Hertfordshire; The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn; Great Western Hospitals; University Hospitals of Leicester; Torbay and South Devon; University Hospitals of North Midlands; and Worcestershire Acute Hospitals. Many of the worst performing hospitals were in the South West and East of England regions, which have previously been identified as areas which struggle on handover delays. Read full story Source: HSJ, 24 November 2022
  18. News Article
    The NHS staffing crisis will be solved only if doctors and nurses get more flexible about their job descriptions and break down barriers between roles, according to Rishi Sunak’s health adviser. Bill Morgan argues that training times for doctors and nurses may have to be reduced, and suggests developing “sub-consultants” and entirely new medical professions, He wants ministers to create an Office for Budget Responsibility-style body to predict future workforce needs. The Treasury has held down the numbers of doctors and nurses Britain trains to prevent “supply-induced demand”, which encourages people to seek appointments that are not needed, Morgan argues. Chronic shortages of qualified staff are the biggest problem facing the health service, which has more than 130,000 vacancies. Morgan acknowledges that this means “some of the government’s key manifesto commitments will not be met”, citing the promise of 6,000 extra GPs. Sunak said this week that the government was “thinking creatively about what new roles and capabilities we need in the healthcare workforce of the future”. He urged the NHS to shed “conventional wisdom”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 24 November 2022
  19. News Article
    Ambulance crews could not respond to almost one in four 999 calls last month – the most ever – because so many were tied up outside A&Es waiting to hand patients over, dramatic new NHS figures show. An estimated 5,000 patients in England – also the highest number on record – potentially suffered “severe harm” through waiting so long either to be admitted to A&E or just to get an ambulance to turn up to help them. Ambulance officers warned that patients were dying every day directly because of the delays since the service could no longer perform its role as a “safety net” for people needing urgent medical help. “The life-saving safety net that NHS ambulance services provide is being severely compromised by these unnecessary delays and patients are dying and coming to harm as a result on a daily basis,” said Martin Flaherty, managing director of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE), which represents the heads of England’s 10 regional NHS ambulance services. Flaherty added: “Our national data for hospital handover delays during October 2022 is extremely worrying and underlines the fact that in some parts of the country efforts to reduce or eradicate these devastating and unnecessary delays are simply not working.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 November 2022
  20. News Article
    The government has been urged to protect “catastrophically” under-resourced mental health social services after a vulnerable man was discharged from a hospital into a Travelodge. Will Mann, a 42-year-old with long-term mental health illness, was “abandoned” by social care services after he was discharged from an NHS hospital, his mother Jackie has said. Speaking with The Independent, Jackie Mann, explained how Will, who had to declare himself homeless before his discharge this year, was told the only available housing accommodation for him was a Travelodge. Mr Manns story has sparked warnings over the state of the shortage of social care and supported accommodation for those with severe mental illness, from the charity Rethink Mental Illness, which warned: “This is another reminder of how the crisis engulfing social care is impacting people’s lives, and why the government must protect mental health in the upcoming budget.” In an interview with The Independent, Jackie Mann, Mr Mann’s mother said: “He had to go straight from there to a Travelodge in Christchurch, which was a very unsuitable place because it was just a room, no cooking facilities. “During the time he was there, nobody came to visit him, he was just sort of abandoned there and during his time there, he was told he had to leave the Travelodge and go to another one because that Travelodge was overbooked.” According to our major charity Rethink, the shortage of “appropriate accommodation” is one of the biggest drivers of delayed discharges for mental health patients. Read full story Source: The Independent, 21 November 2022
  21. News Article
    When David Morganti’s case notes landed on Andrew Cox’s desk this autumn they told a devastating story — but one which was depressingly familiar to the senior coroner for Cornwall. The 87-year-old RAF veteran had fallen and hit his head in the bathroom of the house he shared with his wife, Valerie, in April. It took nine hours for paramedics to reach their home near St Austell, Cornwall. As they waited, the bleeding on his brain became gradually worse until he lost consciousness. By the time he reached hospital it was too late. An expert neurosurgeon told Cox that had he reached hospital faster, Morganti might have survived. The coroner said the effects of the injuries he suffered were likely to have been exacerbated “by a delay in the arrival of an ambulance and his subsequent admission into hospital.” It was the latest in a series of similar deaths the coroner had encountered. After Morganti’s inquest, Cox resolved to carry out a wider investigation into what appeared to be a broken system. He has now sent his findings to Steve Barclay, the health secretary, and demanded he act to prevent more deaths. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 19 November 2022
  22. News Article
    At a time when it feels like the world’s perpetually on fire, we all need a therapist – but trying to find one in the USA is difficult. A study from the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 6 in 10 psychologists “no longer have openings for new patients” in America. The shortage comes as demand for therapy soars: since the beginning of the pandemic, about three-quarters of practitioners have seen their waiting lists expand. In the same period, almost 80% of practitioners report an increase in patients with anxiety disorders and 66% have seen an increase in those needing treatment for depression. “I started my private practice just before Covid hit, and it was certainly filling up then,” says Dr Jennifer Reid, a psychiatrist, writer and podcast host in Philadelphia. “But the numbers have exponentially risen since that time.” Reid focuses on anxiety and insomnia, which have been “major players” in the pandemic. Early on, people with anxiety, phobias or obsessive-compulsive disorder related to germs had particular trouble, she says. Then there was the isolation and the doomscrolling. And now, she says, people are struggling to re-enter the world. “People are finding they’re having anxiety trying to re-engage in social settings in situations that were previously not as safe” at Covid’s peak, she says. Often, she says, people may need to return to their primary care doctor for a period of time, “or they just end up going without and waiting on waitlists, unfortunately”. The APA study found that the average psychologist reported being contacted by 15 potential patients every month; Reid, who combines therapy and medical approaches, says she generally has space for about one new patient every few weeks. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 21 November 2022
  23. News Article
    Paramedics describe a health service in crisis with a lack of investment and increasing demand, of lengthy waits to transfer patients to hospitals and of a social care system facing collapse. So what does a typical ambulance shift look like? The area covered by the East of England Ambulance Service's nearly 400 front-line ambulances is vast. In 2020-21, the service received nearly 1.2 million 999 calls. Ed Wisken has been a paramedic for 13 years. An advanced paramedic specialising in urgent care, Mr Wisken says: "It is really sad to see patients who have had to wait such a long time for an ambulance - but this is just the culmination of years of underfunding and of reduced resources peaking now where demand outstrips supply." "It is upsetting to see it," he says. "It is not nice to see people who have been waiting hours and hours for an ambulance - but we have really hit crisis point now." He says the morale of fellow paramedics and other healthcare workers is currently very low. "The key is you just have to do just one job at a time and just take the patients that you see and do the best for them," he says. "If you worry about the bigger picture too much you will get frustrated and angry - but that's not going to be beneficial for yourself or your patients." Read full story Source: BBC News, 21 November 2022
  24. News Article
    The NHS will receive an extra £3.3bn in each of the next two years, the chancellor has announced, but experts warn the cash is probably only half of what is needed to keep the health service afloat. Jeremy Hunt told the Commons during his autumn statement he had been assured the funding would mean the NHS can hit its “key priorities”. Its chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, later issued a statement welcoming the funding, saying it showed that “the government has been serious about its commitment to prioritise the NHS”. However, it was only last month that NHS England, the organisation Pritchard leads, had forecast a £7bn shortfall in its funding next year, which it warned it could not plug with efficiency measures alone. “The NHS warned it needed more money to cope with the impact of inflation on its costs,” said Nigel Edwards, the chief executive of the independent thinktank Nuffield Trust. “Today’s autumn statement has provided much-needed extra cash from April over the next two years, but this is only around half of what the NHS had warned last month would likely be needed.” Hunt pledged to grow the NHS budget in 2023-24 and 2024-25 by £3.3bn in each year. But Edwards warned that would not account for the £2.5bn worth of inflation and other unexpected cost pressures the NHS has faced in the current financial year. “The impact of today’s funding announcement is that real terms health spending per head after adjusting for age will increase by less than 1% for the next two years,” Edwards added. “This is compared to the long-term average of 2.6% and comes at a time when the NHS cannot afford to stand still and is desperately trying to increase the work it can do to clear record waiting times.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 17 November 2022
  25. News Article
    The plan to tackle long waits in hospital treatment and cancer care in England by 2025 is at serious risk, the spending watchdog says. The National Audit Office report warned inflation and other pressures on the NHS could undermine the push. These included a lack of staff and hospital beds, which was affecting productivity, the watchdog said. But NHS bosses said they could overcome the challenges and the health service was on track to hit its targets. NHS England and the government have set a series of targets over the next three years. They include: returning performance on the 62-day target for cancer treatment to pre-pandemic levels by March 2023 ending waits of over a year and a half for planned treatment, such as knee and hip operations, by April 2023 ending waits of over a year for planned treatment by March 2025 The NAO report comes as the chancellor prepares to set out his tax and spending plans in his Autumn Statement on Thursday. Cuts to public spending are likely but Health Secretary Steve Barclay has strongly hinted the NHS will receive more money. Read full story Source: BBC News, 17 November 2022
×
×
  • Create New...