NHS chaos continues as hospitals cancel operations, beg patients to stay away and treat adults in kids’ ward
THE NHS winter meltdown continued yesterday as desperate hospitals cancelled ops, begged patients to stay away and even treated adults on a children’s ward.
One under-pressure A&E declared a critical black alert as it struggled to deal with a patient every 90 seconds.
A badly-injured rugby player had to be taken to hospital in the back of a pick-up truck because the ambulance took too long. And a car passenger who suffered spinal damage in a crash waited five hours for paramedics.
Britain’s leading emergency doctor Dr Mark Holland said he was stunned that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt had scrapped A&E's four hour targets.
Dr Holland, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said: “Healthcare professionals and medical bodies across the country are reporting difficulties from the front line en masse, yet we are faced with dismissal.
“Mr Hunt is completely out of touch if this is what he believes to be an accurate reflection of the situation.”
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Queen’s Medical Centre, said it had 132 patients waiting in A&E yesterday morning.
The Health Service Journal reported that a leaked email from the trust showed they had seen approximately 215 patients every 24 hours last week. And on Monday it had a record number of patients in casualty with 180 waiting to be seen.
Performance against the four-hour target dipped to below 60 per cent against a target of 95 per cent. At peak times they were seeing one patient every 90 seconds.
The trust declared a black alert throughout Tuesday and Wednesday.
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Hull Royal Infirmary urged people to stay away from A&E unless they were seriously ill.
Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which also runs Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham, said it had seen “bed occupancy exceed capacity” and cancelled operations and closed some non-emergency clinics to free up staff.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Leeds General and St James’s University Hospital, also said it was having to postpone some ops.
Swamped Croydon Hospital in South London was forced to transform a kids’ ward into one for adults after running out of beds.
Hospitals within Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust and Bristol and North Somerset and South Gloucestershire CCGs also declared black alerts yesterday or over the weekend.
Rugby player David Burton was left in agony when he dislocated his knee playing for Leicestershire side Aylestone Athletic on Saturday.
But East Midlands Ambulance Service could not attend for over an hour so teammates used a trestle table as a makeshift stretcher and took him to hospital. Club captain Jonathan Hunt said: “It was a shambles.”
Meanwhile, Gavin Roberts, 26, waited five hours for South Western Ambulance Service after suffering spinal injuries when the car he was in hit a lamppost in Plymouth. Gavin, who was trapped in the car, added: “No one deserves to be sat in the freezing cold unable to move not knowing what is going on for hours.”
Dr Ellen McCourt, former head of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors’ committee, tweeted:
“Chronic underfunding & understaffing are responsible for #NHSCrisis.”
Casualty doc Claire Bronze said: “Everyone I know working in A&E seeing same abysmal conditions.”
But Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust caused fury by advertising for a £58,000 equality and diversity champion. The salary could pay for at least two nurses.
John O’Connell, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Patients will wonder how the Trust can possibly justify this non-medical appointment.”