...and the chief exec said: "Roll over!"It’s just a virus. But it’s giving a great headache to many hospitals across England and Scotland as it spreads. Basically hospitals have too many patients to deal with and not enough beds to put them into.
That’s what the British public gets for its fortune spent on PFI new builds and multiple hospital bed closures. Darzai style polyclinics are clearly just what the NHS needs.
Ambulances stacked up outside A+E departments. That’ll be normal for Norwich and Norfolk then.
But don’t worry. Ben Bradshaw reassures you it’s all OK.
Bit of deja-vu here?
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Our new PFI hospital has less beds than the old one it replaced. It was supposed to be more "efficient" and "better run"...instead it's overcrowded and dangerous. Now there are closed wards due to a Novo virus and after working in A&E i saw cases of people "admitted" to various places (they may have been admitted but they certainly were not on the wards) until beds could be found ...with no time frame for that.
I was surprised to watch how long it takes to discharge people...apart from the normal stuff. I had a 19 bed ward with about 10 of the people waiting to be discharged for "social reasons". Some just refused to go to home and the family had not found a "suitable" alternative. Really wound me up.
Tut, tut Dr Rant, not keeping up again, eh ?
Didn't you know a lot of the chronic stuff, including exacerbations of COPD, etc is to be managed in the community, NOT hospital.
Don't forget Lord Warners wave of "demonstration projects" which was meant to pave the way for "the NHS to carry out millions more operations and tests at the doctors surgery instead of in hospitals"
www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?NavigatedFromDepartment=False&NewsAreaID=2&ReleaseID=234382
[Care closer to home steering group].
Get with the programme, a bed is just a bed, an ambulance is just a big taxi, and a rammed A&E department [with no ability to influence the throughput of patients] is lacking in creativity when it comes to rebranding its corridor space.
a rammed A&E department [with no ability to influence the throughput of patients] is lacking in creativity when it comes to rebranding its corridor space.
Arf! Are you sure you're not doing an MBA at the Open University?
talking of A & E... (yes we do already have an NHS Direct!)
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/health-news/2007/12/03/nhs-front-door-under-consideration-91466-20194128/
jayann
Hi Jayann - A&E attendences have risen inexorably over the last 10yrs.
Rebranding "Casualty" as "A&E" and more recently as "Emergency department" has done nothing to alter the publics perception about entitlement [even for trivial complaints] to urgent medical attention.
We rely on the public to self appraise the potential seriousness of their own symptoms whenever they call an ambulance.
I've heard it said that inappropriate call outs occur in 20-30% of cases - now thats a lot of cash when 800,000+ call outs are made at £160 a go [if we take London as just one example].
A & E charge nurse, yes. But the 'gateway' will presumably, if it doesn't simply duplicate NHS Direct (which blogging doctors dislike because if all too often comprises non-doctors telling people they should see a doctor... though of course some callers who've been told they are OK have died), replace 999 etc.. So, someone who is not a doctor will find some way of intercepting people who think they might need to see one, so that person can decide whether they do or not... and blogging doctors may not like that...
Also, where's the gateway going to send people? -- I suspect Wales is going to open WICs and watered-down polyclinics.
I've heard it said that inappropriate call outs occur in 20-30% of cases
Here in Wales, GPs screen 999 ambulance calls. Calls for ambulances are strictly graded -- here's a Category C
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/wales-news/2007/11/26/footballer-s-two-hours-of-agony-91466-20164295/
(And in my part of Wales, there's only one A & E for, say, 600,000 people, spread over a fairly large area; so A & E drop-ins aren't likely to be massive in number.)
Wales spends less per head than England on the NHS yet has free prescriptions... the expectation has to be that this new gateway thing is a scam.
jayann
Just logged into my NHS.net address for the first time since October. Made me laugh to find that the NHS' own email syetem had filtered Darzi's 'Dear colleague' circular into the junk email folder.
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