‘trolley waits’ worst in country
THE Worcestershire Royal Hospital has suffered an A&E meltdown with patients being forced to wait on trolleys for longer than 12 hours in the last three weeks – making it the worst in the country.
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust announced a “full capacity protocol” to try to tackle the escalating crisis.
The trust was the only one in the country to have breached the A&E time limits and had told staff it plans a three-point action plan to tackle the situation:
Prioritising the safety of the sickest patients by raising the threshold for admission and discharge;
Moving more patients out of A&E safely on to wards;
Asking “outside partners” accept patients earlier.
In an email to staff, interim chief executive Richard Beeken explained the seriousness of the current A&E and “patient flow” situation. He said: “For some time now, all of us in this organisation have been concerned about patient safety and patient to experience at the front door of the WRH site due to poor patient flow. Symptomatic of our issues is the number of lengthy ‘trolley waits’ for admission. For three weeks now Worcester has been the only trust in England declaring 12-hour trolley waits. All of us believe this to be an unacceptable situation.”
Reports have revealed that patients were dying on trolleys and in corridors at the Royal three months before two people died in an A&E scandal.
Worcester Acute Hospitals NHS Trust was condemned by politicians and health cam- paigners after it was revealed in January that two patients had died as they waited for a bed.
It is understood doctors alerted bosses to escalating problems within A&E at that time. Despite the warnings, two further patients later died in tragic circumstances.
A woman in her 80s was admitted in October and put on an end-of-life pathway as it was expected she would die.
But she was never formally admitted to the hospital and spent 22 hours on a trolley in A&E. She died in an A&E cubicle with relatives around her.