A&E, ONLY WITH
PATIENTS will only be treated at A&E if they have a referral or arrive in an ambulance, under new plans being considered by the Government.
The proposals are being brought forward by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine to help break hospital coronavirus transmissions.
The plans have been sent to NHS England and will also go to key ministers next week.
The college is concerned that “people will die” if A&E departments “return to the existing model” due to the overcrowding of hospitals.
Under the new plans, designed to reduce the risk of transmission, emergency patients will no longer be able to turn up at A&E unless they have a referral from a GP, NHS 111 or they are brought in by ambulance.
However, the college says there will still be allowance for discretionary “life and death” cases where this rule can be broken.
In a second part of its plan, “hot clinics” will be set up for patients who are referred with less time-critical complaints, such as severe headaches requiring a scan.
These important and urgent but “non-emergency” patients would be separated from the emergency department.
The third measure would increase the number of clinicians taking NHS 111 calls.
The calls have been shown to increase appropriate and timely referrals as well as reduce unnecessary ambulance call-outs.
Dr Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “Going back to how we used to operate is not an option – patients will die if we do.
“It was just four months ago when we were seeing overcrowding on a record scale in emergency departments. It was unacceptable then and put lives at risk.
“To go back to that now will lead to avoidable patient and staff illness or death.
“If departments are crowded, we cannot protect patients and staff. Crowding has long been associated with avoidable mortality, and Covid-19 reinforces and multiplies this risk.
“We must have a way to enforce social distancing in emergency departments to ensure that patients do not become infected while seeking healthcare.
“If supermarkets can get this right, then the very institution that people entrust with their health must do so too.
“There is a need for wholesale of PPE, but has demonstrated an ability to optimise the delivery of care that puts patient safety first. We must learn from this response.
“We have seen a rapid expansion of bed capacity, appropriate levels of staffing, a breaking down of barriers with less siloed working.
“Different parts of the hospital are working better together than ever before, with changed discharge practices for medically fit patients, better use of same day emergency care, and better utilisation of NHS 111.
“All of this has resulted in a much more responsive emergency care system.
“While Covid-19 remains with us we need to continue to do things differently. Emergency departments must return to their original core purpose – the rapid assessment and emergency stabilisation of seriously ill and injured patients. They can no longer be used to cover where
A BETTER understanding of the science would make parents less concerned about social distancing and more willing to send their children back to school, a public health expert has claimed.
Professor Robert Dingwall said the Government’s two-metre rule was unnecessarily restrictive and needed to be scrapped.
Changing it to a one-metre rule would allow a swifter recovery for the economy and a faster return to education for millions of children.
Alternative measures to make schools less risky, such as throwing away soft toys, were only heightening anxiety, said Prof Dingwall.
He said: “Hand washing is more important than throwing out all the teddies.”
He said Britain was one of the few countries in Europe to have the two-metre guidelines, which were based on older experiments in artificial environments.
He said: “The rule is unnecessarily restrictive in reducing transmission. The Government has been trying to back away from being so prescriptive and moving towards giving advice rather than rules, but it is making a mistake on not reducing the two-metre rule.
“There will be one set of organisations who will be wedded to the rule and concerned about getting sued or criticised.
“This over-compliance will be tangled up with other health and safety issues they may have to implement.
“The two-metre message makes people anxious. It is making parents anxious about sending their children back to school.
“If people had a better understanding of the science it would alleviate their anxieties. “I hear tragic cases of teddy bears being thrown away, a ban on water play and on sand play, and picking up a school book will mean that book has to then go into quarantine. “This is a very unwelcome experience. Hand washing is more important than throwing out all the teddies. There is no more risk of catching coronavirus in school than in any other community setting, particularly with younger children, and flu is more deadly than people realise