Hospitals feeling the heat in A&E
HOSPITALS are struggling under pressure as general beds fill up with Covid patients – leaving people waiting hours longer than they should for emergency help in A&E.
The number of Covid patients hospitalised in general beds has increased by more than a third in just three weeks.
And as infection rates remain high, patients are ‘staying in hospital for longer,’ according to the region’s health bosses.
The high volume of Covid patients in general beds has had a knock-on effect on the amount of time people spend in A&E, say hospital chiefs.
Those patients are often showing up with conditions that have worsened during the pandemic, due to a delay in treatment as people were naturally concerned about going to hospital at the peak of virus transmission.
The severity of cases is also being coupled with a general rise in the demand for urgent and emergency care, according to a host of doctors from across the region who have shared their concerns with the M.E.N.
With a lack of beds for people needing admission after turning up at A&E, they are instead forced to wait for hours longer than they should, with one A&E seeing ‘70 per cent’ of patients waiting more than four hours in A&E last weekend. Wythenshawe Hospital’s A&E department was filled with patients waiting for hours over the last weekend, October 30 and 31.
The proportion of patients being seen within four hours – the waiting time target which is in force across all of the region’s emergency units – should be at 95 per cent.
But over the course of last week,
October 30 and 31, Wythenshawe saw its fulfilment of that target plummet to just ‘20 to 30 per cent,’ the M.E.N. understands.
A spokesperson for Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, which manages Wythenshawe Hospital, said: “All patients attending emergency departments are seen in order of clinical priority, so those attending with minor ailments will be waiting for longer than more seriously ill patients.”
A Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership spokesperson added: “We are seeing very high levels of attendance at A&E departments across Greater Manchester, which is impacting on how long patients are having to wait for treatment.”
But, with the most challenging months for the NHS still to come, other hospital trusts in Greater Manchester – which cover units like Salford Royal and Fairfield General – waiting times at A&E are similarly skyrocketing.
In Greater Manchester’s hospitals and beyond, doctors say they are finding it difficult.
“We’re all in a pretty similar position, we’re all under a lot of pressure,” emergency medicine consultant and North West chair of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Andy Ashton, told the M.E.N.
“During Covid, we were under pressure because it was a new illness, we didn’t know a lot about it or how to treat it. But levels of attendances at A&E were very low.
“Since around May this year, attendances have gone right back up again.
“All of my Manchester colleagues say they are absolutely under the cosh. I have to keep five per cent of my brain saying ‘don’t be overwhelmed, keep going.’ I’ve never really had to do that before.”