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News Article
Man waits eight years for mental health therapy as services hit by demand
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A man has waited eight years to get adequate mental health care, as waiting lists for therapy grow. Myles Cook, 47, from Essex, lives with severe depression and has been fighting to get one-to-one counselling for eight years but he has been told there are not enough therapists locally to respond to the demand. Instead, he has been referred to group sessions, which he said were “detrimental” to his condition and manages his condition with medication but said he did not find that helpful either. He said: “If you’re not getting help, and all you keep getting are pills and pills that don’t seem to be doing much. It might take the edge off but it doesn’t really do anything for my depression and because of the way the benefits system works, I’m not getting any therapy If I’m not on tablets, they’ll probably kick me off on my benefits because I’m not being treated.” “I take the tablets, the psychiatric medications, I keep taking them although they’re not helpful because I need to have something to prove that I’m being treated to keep my benefits.” At least 95% of patients needing NHS talking therapy services, called IAPT, should receive treatment within 18 weeks. But figures previously uncovered by The Independent showed that just one in five patients have their second IAPT appointment within three months. And the NHS has failed to meet its target of having 1.6 million patients seen by IAPT services last year. Data published last year shows this was missed by 400,0000 at the end of 2021-22. Read full story Source: The Independent, 16 January 2023 -
News Article
NHS ‘bed-blocking’ fuelled by 50 steps needed to discharge fit patients
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Hospital staff have to complete 50 separate steps on average to discharge a patient, it has emerged, as the NHS grapples with a bed-blocking crisis. On average, around 14,000 patients deemed fit to leave hospital are stuck in beds every day, according to the latest official figures. The congestion is helping to fuel the backlog in accident and emergency (A&E) departments, where more than 55,000 patients waited 12 hours or longer last month. Steve Barclay, Health Secretary, announced an additional £250 million in funding last week to buy up care beds to help discharge thousands of patients. But doctors, social care experts and families have warned discharges are being delayed by NHS “bureaucracy” and excessive form filling. Dr Matt Kneale, co-chair of the Doctors’ Association UK and a junior doctor in Manchester, said patients are held up by “numerous bottlenecks” before being sent home. “While social care shortages are the predominant issue, smaller factors stack up to create a big problem,” he told The Telegraph. Many hospitals have limits on the times their pharmacies are open, he explained, meaning patients can often be stuck on the ward all day, or an extra night, waiting for their medication. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 15 January 2023 -
News Article
It’s beyond dreadful. We’re now running A&E out in the corridor and waiting room
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The intense pressure on the NHS in recent weeks has left hospitals unable to cope, patients at risk and staff in despair, writes an A&E doctor in this Guardian article. "I’ve worked in the NHS for over 10 years and I’ve never known it as bad as it is now. A&Es are swamped and primary care is swamped too. It’s a very sorry of state for all concerned. The last few weeks have been beyond dreadful and it was all predicted by those on the ground months ago". We’re now in a position in our A&E where we are looking after a ward and a half of admitted patients, who take up the bedded spaces, while simultaneously running an emergency department out of the corridor and waiting room. Having to manage the very sick in inappropriate areas is now becoming the norm. An emergency department (ED) is not a safe place. It’s filled with some of the sickest people in a hospital, in a chaotic environment. There are lots of comings and goings, with patients being moved frequently and staff looking after multiple patients. It’s a recipe for things getting missed. If you add in the fact that ED personnel work a shift rota, so new staff come on duty every few hours and they don’t necessarily know the patients, there is more scope for potentially vital information being lost. "As ED doctors, we have always tried to give the dying a place of privacy, where loved ones can be with them in some relative peace. I would hope that same degree of compassion was present in all A&Es, but it’s becoming more challenging to provide." Read full story Source: The Guardian, 12 January 2023 -
News Article
Ambulances taking 90 minutes to get to 999 calls
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Patients with emergencies such as heart attacks and strokes in England had to wait more than 90 minutes on average for an ambulance at the end of 2022. It came after a sharp deterioration in 999 response times in December - they were nearly twice as bad as November. Record worst waits were also recorded for life-threatening cardiac arrests, while A&E waits of over four-hours reached their highest level ever. Patient groups warned the delays would be leading to real harm. Combined, the data - released by NHS England - represents the worst-ever set of emergency care figures since modern records began in 2004. The figures show: Average waits of more than 90 minutes to reach emergency calls such as heart attacks - five times longer than the target time - with waits of over 150 minutes in some regions. Response times for the highest priority calls, such as cardiac arrests, taking close to 11 minutes - 4 minutes longer than they should. More than a third of patients in A&E waiting longer than 4 hours. One in seven patients waiting more than 12 hours for a bed on a ward when they need to be admitted. But there has been some progress with the waiting list for routine treatment falling slightly, to 7.19 million by the end of November. Read full story Source: BBC News, 12 January 2023 -
News Article
Steve Barclay ‘concedes’ he will have to increase NHS pay offer to avoid strikes
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Health secretary Steve Barclay has privately conceded that he will have to offer a higher pay rise to NHS staff. Mr Barclay has admitted that more than one million NHS staff members deserve more money despite previously insisting that existing pay increases were all the government could afford. But, he also made clear that any new pay rises would come from the current health budget meaning potential cuts to key services, according to The Guardian. His U-turn comes in advance of nurses in England staging two more strikes next week, which is likely to force hospitals to again work at a reduced capacity following previous industrial action. Read full story Source: The Independent, 13 January 2023 -
News Article
ADHD services ‘swamped’, say experts as more UK women seek diagnosis
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
ADHD awareness hassoared among women in the UK in the past year, but waiting times and the dearth of clinical awareness are leaving people awaiting diagnosis in a perilous position, leading experts have warned. Dr Max Davie, a consultant paediatrician and co-founder of ADHD UK, said that people talking openly about their diagnoses – including a number of high-profile celebreties – had led to more people seeking referrals for the condition. However, while awareness is increasing many trusts and private providers have shut waiting lists because of demand. “I think it’s probably as big a year as we’ve ever had. We are seeing a lot more people from all walks of life seeking a diagnosis later in life, particularly women,” Dr Davie said. “At the same time waiting lists have gone through the roof. NHS services have been swamped for a while and private providers are also closing their lists – there are wildly inadequate services for ADHD diagnosis, particularly for adults.” Dr Tony Lloyd, the chief executive of the ADHD foundation, said its own figures suggested a 400% increase in the number of adults seeking a diagnosis since 2020, adding that prescription volumes did not take account of those who do not use medication. “ADHD remains significantly under-diagnosed and under-treated in the UK – at great cost to public services and to the individual and the workforce,” he said. "Stigma around the condition, which the charity says affects one in 20 people in the UK, resulted in negative outcomes for individuals and high costs to the economy. Dismissing ADHD as a cultural construct and undeserving drain on finite NHS resources only adds to the enduring stigma and stereotyping of those with ADHD,” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 January 2023 -
News Article
Deaths inquiry thrown into doubt as only 11 staff agree to give evidence
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The chair of an inquiry into hundreds of deaths at a mental health trust has revealed she may not be able to deliver it in its current form following a ‘hugely disappointing’ lack of staff coming forward to give evidence. Former national clinical director for mental health, Geraldine Strathdee, chair of the non-statutory inquiry into deaths at Essex Partnership University Trust, has penned an open letter warning just 11 of 14,000 staff contacted said they will attend evidence sessions. It was meant to report in spring 2023. However, after raising concerns with ministers, Dr Strathdee said she believes the inquiry will not be able to meet its terms of reference with a non-statutory status. The inquiry was announced in 2021 and last year chiefs revealed they were probing 1,500 deaths of people in contact with Essex mental health services between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2020. However, without statutory powers, staff are not compelled to give evidence under oath. Many bereaved families, of which just one in four has engaged with the current probe, are campaigning for a statutory inquiry into deaths. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 January 2023 -
News Article
Eight trusts win place on elective recovery project
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Eight trusts have been awarded roles trialling a new accreditation scheme for surgical hubs as part of an NHS England pilot that will run until March. The creation of up to 140 surgical hubs, sites which are ring-fenced for surgical work only, is a key plank of the NHS England and government elective recovery plan for addressing the backlog. The full benefits are still being finalised but accredited trusts will likely get better access to additional recovery funding and central support from the Getting It Right First Time team. The hubs 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 (including spinal surgery), gynaecology, ear nose and throat, and urology. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 12 January 2023 -
News Article
Sick man of Europe: why the crisis-ridden NHS is falling apart
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Other countries are looking on appalled as the UK’s failure to reform social care has left its health service struggling to survive. There are blockages on the way in to the hospital, blockages inside them, and perhaps most frustrating for healthcare staff and patients, blockages getting those who have been treated and have recovered out of the front door and home, or into the community. It is this last problem that is proving hardest to crack. Despite promises from successive UK prime ministers to mend the broken social care system, it remains completely dysfunctional. This country is by no means unique in its health and social care struggles. Even in nations often held up as having model healthcare systems – such as France and Germany – the combined pressures caused by ageing populations, financial constraints, recruitment problems, Covid-19 and flu have taken their toll. On the issue of social care, French doctors and experts admit to shortcomings, though not on the scale of those in the UK. “It’s not that we don’t have problems, but things are organised differently,” said Blanche Le Bihan, a professor at the French School of Public Health and researcher at the Arènes scientific research centre in Rennes specialising in social care. “The system is far too fragmented, that’s the main issue with social care in France – communication, coordination are always complicated,” Le Bihan says. “But while it’s far from perfect, it’s not a major factor in hospitals’ current problems.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 8 January 2023 -
News ArticlePatient safety is at risk “every single day”, with patients in desperate need of intensive care waiting hours in Accident and Emergency departments across Scotland, the deputy chair of British Medical Association Scotland has said. The harrowing description of the scenes in hospitals came as health secretary Humza Yousaf admitted patients were receiving care he would not want to receive himself as the NHS continues to battle intense winter pressures. Dr Lailah Peel, deputy chair of the Scottish arm of the British Medical Association (BMA), told the BBC’s Sunday Show the crisis was “years in the making”. She blamed a creaking social care system and increased delayed discharges. The comments come after details of a January 2021 briefing from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) and the College of Paramedics to the health secretary warned of an unacceptable situation in Scotland’s hospitals. Reported in the Sunday Times, the briefing also specified the actions needed to avoid a similar situation during the current winter crisis, warning an increase of at least 1,000 new beds was needed as well as more doctors and nurses. Dr Peel said it was the case patients were “absolutely” dying in hospitals in Scotland due to the ongoing crisis in the health service. "There’s no shadow of a doubt that that is happening,” she told the BBC. Read full story Source: The Scotsman, 8 January 2023
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News Article
Rishi Sunak holds emergency talks with NHS leaders over winter crisis
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Rishi Sunak has held emergency talks over the weekend with NHS and care leaders in an attempt to tackle the winter healthcare crisis in England. The NHS Recovery Forum at No 10 on Saturday focused on four key issues: social care and delayed discharge, urgent and emergency care, elective care and primary care. A Downing Street spokesperson said the aim was “to help share knowledge and practical solutions so that we can tackle the most crucial challenges such as delayed discharge and emergency care”. But Sunak has been warned that the meeting is unlikely to reverse the NHS’s fortunes. Labour said patients deserved more than a “talking shop” and the Liberal Democrats said it was “too little, too late”. Senior doctors say the NHS is on a knife-edge, with many A&E units struggling to keep up with demand and trusts and ambulance services declaring critical incidents. Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said there were “no silver bullets” to solving the crisis at hospitals and other care centres. “This crisis has been a decade or more in the making and we are now paying the high price for years of inaction and managed decline,” he said. “Patients are experiencing delays that we haven’t seen for years". Read full story Source: The Guardian, 7 January 2023 -
News Article
Care providers ask for doubled fees to care for people discharged from hospitals
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Care providers are demanding double the usual fees to look after thousands of people who need to be discharged from hospitals to ease the crisis in the NHS. Care England, which represents the largest private care home providers, said on Sunday it wanted the government to pay them £1,500 a week per person, citing the need to pay care workers more and hire rehabilitation specialists so people languishing in hospital can eventually be sent home. The rate is about double what most local authorities currently pay for care home beds, an amount Martin Green, the chief executive of Care England, described as “inadequate”. The demand comes as the health secretary, Steve Barclay promised “urgent action” with up to £250m in new funding for the NHS to buy care beds to clear wards of medically fit patients. The money will be used to buy beds in care homes, hospices and hotels where people are looked after by homecare providers, as well as pay for hospital upgrades. Stays will be no longer than four weeks until the end of March. The use of hotels as care homes began during the pandemic and has been controversial, with reports of problems with hygiene and supplies of specialist equipment. The charity Age UK last week criticised their renewed use as “not an appropriate place to provide high-quality care for older people in need of support to recuperate after a spell in hospital”. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 9 January 2023 -
News ArticleWith NHS staff being forced to witness our patients dying in corridors, in cupboards, on floors and in stranded ambulances, we can only thank our lucky stars that the country’s second most powerful politician is the man who last year published Zero: Eliminating Unnecessary Deaths in a Post-Pandemic NHS. Because the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, cannot possibly stand back and permit these crisis conditions to continue, can he? He knows better than anyone – having written 320 pages on precisely this fact – that avoidable deaths are the very worst kinds of death, the ones that sicken families and clinicians to their core. Let’s remind ourselves of how strongly Hunt feels about this subject. The blurb of his book, published only last May, rings out with moral righteousness. “How many avoidable deaths are there in the NHS every week?” he asks. “150. What figure should we aim for? Zero. Mistakes happen. But nobody deserves to become a statistic in an NHS hospital. That’s why we need to aim for zero.” He even offers a road map towards achieving that end that, unusually for a politician, centres on radical candour. Don’t lie. Don’t deflect. Don’t spin. Don’t cover up. Be honest and open about mistakes and failures because this is the first, essential step to fixing them. To the collective despair of frontline staff, the government’s actual, as opposed to rhetorical, response to the humanitarian crisis gripping the NHS is a perverse inversion of everything the chancellor purports to hold dear. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 6 January 2023
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News Article
NHS Wales consultant explains why healthcare system is on verge of collapse
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The NHS is on the verge of collapse due to demand for healthcare rising significantly faster than funding levels, a consultant has warned. Peter Neville, a consultant for NHS Wales, took to social media to explain why, in his view, the system is failing. The consultant physician, who has been working in the NHS in Yorkshire and Wales for 32 years, set out the challenges facing the health service in a Twitter thread. He said he had experienced the NHS at its best, in 2008, and its worst, in 2022. He wrote: "Over at least the past 15 years, we have seen a relentless increase in demand, both in primary care and in hospital care. This has been absolutely predictable by social statisticians for decades and is based on the fact that our elderly are surviving much longer. "Our elderly use a very large percentage of NHS of resources, unsurprisingly because they are more prone to disease, frailty, and dementia. They need more social care and hospital care as they get older. And they are living longer. (Immigrants, by the way, use much less care). "Over this period NHS funding has, broadly speaking, risen about 1-2% over inflation. If NHS funding increases with inflation yet demand increases, then clearly spend per person will drop. Demand has increased considerably above 2%, which is why the NHS is failing to manage it." Read full story Source: Wales Online, 3 January 2023 -
News ArticleAn ICS chief has said the NHS workforce crisis is not the result of a ‘funding issue’ but caused by an inefficient use of resources. Patricia Miller, chief executive of Dorset Integrated Care Board, told a board meeting on Thursday that “constantly talking about the NHS needing more money” was undermining leaders’ case to government. She said: “We have got a workforce issue in the NHS, there is no doubt about that. I don’t actually believe we have got a funding issue. We just don’t use our resources very efficiently and I don’t think we do our case any positive favour with government when we’re constantly talking about the NHS needing more money when we can’t demonstrate that what we do is efficient. “So I don’t actually accept we’ve got a funding issue unless we start to work at the optimum and then we can absolutely demonstrate that. “I think what this comes down to is that our systems are too complicated and that starts at the centre, where every initiative we have is not about redesigning service models end-to-end but about layering on different solutions to different ends of the pathway and it just makes it more complicated. “I’ve no doubt that we’ve probably got 50-plus entrance and exit points to our urgent emergency care service, it’s ridiculous. I can’t navigate my way around 50 or 60, so there’s no way a patient can do it.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 6 January 2023
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News Article
Trust that banned corridor care ‘reluctantly’ brings it back
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
An acute trust has announced the ‘reluctant’ return of ‘corridor care’ – having previously eradicated the unsafe practice – due to extreme ambulance handover delays and other emergency pressures. Last year, University Hospitals North Midlands Trust chief executive Tracy Bullock said the trust had been “resisting” placing patients in corridors as it “brought significant patient safety and staff wellbeing issues”. This was despite the trust having large numbers of handover delays, being singled out for criticism by the ambulance service, and ‘corridor care’ being commonplace in many other acute hospitals amid severe bed pressures. The trust had successfully eliminated the practice several years earlier, because of these issues. However, at its board meeting today, the trust confirmed the practice was formally introduced at its Royal Stoke site on the day of the ambulance staff strike (21 December) because it was “holding more ambulances than we deem acceptable”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 4 January 2023 -
News Article
NHS bosses consider deploying field hospitals in 'call to arms'
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Managers in an NHS area are considering using "field hospitals" to deal with the surge in patients. Sarah Whiteman, chief medical director of the Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board told colleagues the use of tents was a "real possibility". In an email, she also asked colleagues to sign temporary contracts to work in emergency departments. The board said the use of tents in hospital grounds was not imminent. Dr Whiteman's email, obtained by The Sunday Times and seen by the BBC, began with the statement: "Call to arms". It emphasised how busy the acute units were within her board's operational area, including Bedford, Milton Keynes and Luton and Dunstable Hospitals. In the message, she promised staff would receive training and induction if they stepped forward to support colleagues. Read full story Source: BBC News, 4 January 2023 -
News Article
People urged to wear masks and stay at home if unwell as pressure on NHS mounts
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
People have been urged to wear face coverings and remain at home if feeling unwell, as an already crisis-stricken NHS faces down multiple waves of winter illnesses. With children returning to school at a time when high levels of flu, Covid-19 and scarlet fever are all being reported, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has issued fresh guidance in a bid to minimise the diseases’ spread. Parents have been urged to keep children at home if they are unwell and have a fever, with adults told to only go out if necessary and wear face coverings if they are ill and avoid visiting vulnerable people. While transport secretary Mark Harper said the advice was “very sensible”, Downing Street insisted that such guidance was “pretty longstanding”, stressing that it was “not mandatory” and remained a far cry from ministers “telling people what to do” at the height of the pandemic. The government has also reintroduced travel bans for those testing positive for Covid-19 in China from 5 January amid a mass outbreak there. It comes as pressure on the NHS continues to grow, but Rishi Sunak said he was “confident” the NHS has the funding it needs despite accusations from senior doctors his government is in denial about the scale of the crisis in the health service. Read full story Source: The Independent, 3 January 2023 -
News Article
The targets the NHS no longer has to meet
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
NHS England has shelved priorities on Long Covid and diversity and inclusion – as well as a wide range of other areas – in its latest slimmed down operational planning guidance, HSJ analysis shows. NHSE published its planning guidance for 2023-24, which sets the national “must do” asks of trust and integrated care systems, shortly before Christmas. HSJ has analysed objectives, targets and asks from the 2022-23 planning guidance which do not appear in the 2023-24 document. The measures on which trusts and systems will no longer be held accountable for include improving the service’s black, Asian and minority ethnic disparity ratio by “delivering the six high-impact actions to overhaul recruitment and promotion practices”. Another omission from the 2023-24 guidance compared to 2022-23 is a target to increase the number of patients referred to post-Covid services, who are then seen within six weeks of their referral. Several requirements on staff have been removed, including to ”continue to support the health and wellbeing of our staff, including through effective health and wellbeing conversations” and ”continued funding of mental health hubs to enable staff access to enhanced occupational health and wellbeing and psychological support”. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 4 January 2022 -
News Article
NHS patients resort to sleeping in cars as crisis deepens
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
A combination of Covid, flu, and Strep A has seen more than a dozen trusts and ambulance services declare critical incidents in recent days. NHS patients are sleeping in their cars outside hospitals, as the chaos engulfing the health service is set to last until Easter. Some 13% of hospital beds in England are filled with people with Covid or flu, NHS England figures show, with the treatment backlog also at a record high of 7.2 million. But Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents health service managers, said no reprieve is expected until April. "It seems likely that the next three months will be defined by further critical incidents needing to be declared and the quality of care being compromised," he told the Guardian. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Telegraph, 3 January 2023 -
News Article
Thousands of patients go missing from NHS care
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Police have carried out more than 5,500 investigations into patients who have been reported missing from NHS facilities in Scotland since 2019. The figures were outlined in a written response from Keith Brown, the justice secretary, to Jamie Greene, the Conservative MSP. Greene, who is the justice spokesman for the Conservatives, said the figures gave serious cause for concern. He said that the complete figure could be much higher because the data provided only included those reported to police. He urged Brown and Humza Yousaf, the health secretary, to provide adequate resources for policing and the health sector to ensure vulnerable patients were not slipping through the cracks. Greene said: “These figures are deeply alarming. Relatives expect their loved ones to be safe while they are staying, or being treated in, an NHS facility. It gives serious cause for concern that over 200 investigations have had to be launched in just the last few years to determine the whereabouts of young people who went missing from NHS grounds.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Times, 3 January 2023 -
News Article
Government urged to take action over NHS pressures
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The crisis engulfing the NHS will continue until Easter, health leaders have warned, as senior doctors accused ministers of letting patients die needlessly through inaction. More than a dozen trusts and ambulance services have declared critical incidents in recent days, with soaring demand, rising flu and Covid cases and an overstretched workforce piling pressure on the health service. But amid warnings that up to 500 people a week may be dying due to delays in emergency care alone, and of oxygen for seriously ill patients running out in parts of England, NHS leaders warned more chaos was expected until April. “It seems likely that the next three months will be defined by further critical incidents needing to be declared and the quality of care being compromised,” said Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents the whole healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Ministers face growing pressure to grip the crisis. The British Medical Association (BMA) said the government’s “deafening” silence and failure to act was a “political choice” that was leading to patients “dying unnecessarily”. The Liberal Democrats urged the government to recall parliament, while Labour blamed government “mismanagement” for creating a sense of “jeopardy” around the NHS. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 2 January 2022 -
News ArticleThe government should declare a national NHS major incident to rescue the healthcare system from the current crisis, a senior health official says. Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine (SAM), says that the pressures on the NHS seen over the festive period are not new. He added that a number of recommendations had been outlined since the pandemic that offer the “best hope” of a short-term solution. Declaring a national NHS major incident would mean all four UK nations would co-ordinate their response and allocate resources to help meet the overwhelming demand for care that is enveloping many hospitals around the country. Taking that step would help combat the current situation, Dr Cooksley says, which NHS chiefs believe is having a similar effect on the service to the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. “The current situation in urgent and emergency care is shocking. It is in a critical state for patients and it is an extremely difficult for healthcare staff who are unable to deliver the care they want to," Dr Cooksley said. “Political leaders across the UK need to listen, meet urgently and accept the need to declare a national NHS major incident. "The outcome must be a four-nation emergency strategy which results in short-term stabilisation, medium-term improvement and long-term growth – the grave situation we are in means it will be a long journey. Sustainable workforce and capacity plans are required urgently to boost morale among staff and patients – as we have long called for – and we now need to see action.” Read full story Source: Manchester Evening News, 1 January 2022
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News Article
Up to 500 people dying each week from emergency care delays, doctor says
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
Up to 500 people are dying every week because of delays in emergency care, Britain’s top accident and emergency doctor has said. Dr Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), said a bad flu season was compounding systemic problems, leading to hundreds of unnecessary deaths. NHS leaders warned last week that the health service is in the grip of a “twindemic”, with soaring flu admissions and the impact of Covid “hitting staff hard”. Dr Boyle told Times Radio: “If you look at the graphs they all are going the wrong way, and I think there needs to be a real reset. We need to be in a situation where we cannot just shrug our shoulders and say this winter was terrible, let’s do nothing until next winter. “We need to increase our capacity within our hospitals, we need to make sure that there are alternative ways so that people aren’t all just funnelled into the ambulance service and emergency department. We cannot continue like this – it is unsafe and it is undignified.” Read full story Source: The Telegraph, 1 January 2023 -
News ArticleFamilies of people with dementia have said there is a national crisis in care safety as it emerged that more than half of residential homes reported on by inspectors this year were rated “inadequate” or requiring improvement – up from less than a third pre-pandemic. Serious and often shocking failings uncovered in previously “good” homes in recent months include people left in bed “for months”, pain medicine not being administered, violence between residents and malnutrition – including one person who didn’t eat for a month. In homes in England where standards have slumped from “good” to “inadequate”, residents’ dressings went unchanged for 20 days, there were “revolting” filthy carpets, “unexplained and unwitnessed wounds” and equipment was ”encrusted with dirt”, inspectors’ reports showed. Nearly one in 10 care homes in England that offer dementia support reported on by Care Quality Commission inspectors in 2022 were given the very worst rating – more than three times the ratio in 2019, according to Guardian analysis. Read full story Source: 29 December 2022
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