- Accident and emergency patients may have to wait for
treatment in inflatable tents in hospital car parks because casualty departments
cannot cope. Health service managers say some patients are forced to wait
hours in ambulances outside A&E, and the vehicles are needed for other
patients.
-
- Patients' groups and opposition parties say hospitals
are under such pressure to hit government targets on waiting times that
they are refusing to admit people until they know they can see them within
the pledged period.
-
- The government target stipulates that A&E patients
should be seen and admitted or discharged within four hours of arriving
at a casualty department. Frances Blunden, a policy adviser to the Consumers'
Association, said: "Some hospitals are not admitting patients because
if they are still in an ambulance, the clock has not started ticking on
the four-hour wait."
-
- Dr Chris Carney, chief executive of the East Anglian
Ambulance NHS Trust, said his service had come close to erecting "temporary
ambulance receptions" because of patient queues. A spokesman said:
"We have portable inflatable tents which would be used. Patients could
be temporarily housed there."
-
- Staffordshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust also has similar
contingency measures.
-
- Carl Ledbury, a national officer for the Association
of Professional Ambulance Personnel, says in one case a patient had been
forced to wait for more than four hours in an ambulance outside an A&E
department in the West Midlands.
-
- Chris Grayling, the shadow Health minister, said: "This
appalling situation has arisen because of the Government's obsession with
targets. I have been told ambulance control centres are struggling to keep
up with 999 calls, let alone with non-emergency patients waiting to be
taken to hospital.
-
- "I have now been told of at least three ambulance
services which have contingency plans for temporary holding centres outside
A&E because they are regularly having patients either turned away from
hospitals, or ambulances are having to wait outside for hours before they
can deliver their patients. It is an absolute disgrace."
-
- Hospitals are measured on what percentage of patients
are seen within the four hours. Trust managers are desperate to hit targets
because the ratings affect their budgets and their ability to become foundation
hospitals with more freedom from central control.
-
- A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "It
is only sensible for all trusts in the country to have their own contingency
plans for unforeseen circumstances."
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=459912
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