EMERGENCY CARE CRISIS

NHS staff reveal scale of crisis at £1bn hospital SNP slated for trying to conceal true picture

SNP hires English hit squad for troubled flagship hospital Patients forced to sleep on trolleys in packed corridors Red Cross ambulances used to shuttle sick home Patients told to avoid A&E

A CATALOGUE of horror has been unveiled at Scotland’s £1billion flagship hospital by an NHS whistleblower.

Patients on drips are being treated on trolleys in corridors and British Red Cross crews are taking the elderly and immobile home.

A source at the new Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow has disclosed that some patients arriving with urgent problems are waiting more than 24 hours to be moved into wards or discharged.

Incredibly, the hospital has hired a hit squad to try to sort out the service – drafted in from the NHS in England.

The revelations are the latest to hit Scotland’s beleaguered health service this winter, with at least two other health boards warning patients not to come to A&E departments as they are too busy.

Health Secretary Shona Robison has previously said the NHS in Scotland is performing better than south of the Border, where conditions have been described as a ‘humanitarian crisis’.

But NHS staff have told the Scottish Daily Mail the situation in Scotland is ‘the same’.

The fact that a taskforce from south of

the Border has been brought in to solve the crisis comes as a huge embarrassment to Miss Robison.

The appalling details concern patients being treated at the hospital’s Immediate Assessment Unit (IAU), which receives patients sent by GPs and who have urgent medical problems such as chest pain, seizures and sepsis.

Unlike A&E, it is not subject to the Scottish Government’s four-hour waiting time target, despite receiving more patients.

Speaking about the crippling pressure the unit is under, the source said: ‘I don’t remember anything as bad as this before. It is unsatisfactory for a First World country. Staff can’t function properly in their role of providing acute care to patients.

‘The NHS in England has been getting a pummelling because patients are waiting on trolleys and being boarded out, and they are using the British Red Cross to transport patients. Well, that is also happening here. At times it has been dreadful.’

The source disclosed that on Monday more than 40 patients were on the unit, although it only has 28 beds. The remainder were put on chairs or trolleys, ten of them placed in the corridor because of a lack of space.

The source said: ‘Patients were being treated on trolleys, with antibiotic drips and fluids while on corridors. It is undignified for them to be treated and sleeping in these conditions.

‘On the ward there is no privacy because it is an assessment unit, so the beds are in curtained cubicles and they have to share a toilet. There is no shower.

‘There are patients stuck there for more than 24 hours but it’s not somewhere you would want to spend a long time. There is activity all night, it’s bright and noisy. Patients have complained about delays in their treatment.

‘Then there are Red Cross ambulances taking elderly, immobile patients home because of a shortage of NHS ambulances. There has been a huge outcry about this in England but the same is going on here.

‘Across the hospital there have been up to 90 people – the equivalent of three wards full of patients – treated in inappropriate wards, such as surgical wards, because of a lack of space on medical wards. Boarding patients is recognised as being poor for patient care.’

Previously, an elderly patient died on a trolley in the department, sparking a review, and extra cubicles were installed.

The man died of a cardiac arrest following a six-hour wait for treatment in November 2015. At the time NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said the IAU has been fully staffed but was ‘under extra pressure as a result of a higher than average number of patients attending’.

A year later, staff say the pressure on them is worse than ever.

The £842million showpiece hospital has hit problems since it opened in April 2015. The following month, there were reports of chaotic scenes as staff struggled to cope with patient admissions.

In June 2015, Government experts were sent in to help improve A&E waiting times after figures showed the unit was the worst in Scotland.

But as recently as New Year’s Day only 88.5 per cent of A&E patients at the QEUH waited less than the Government target of four hours.

Speaking days ago, when NHS Scotland figures showed hospitals are still missing key waiting times targets, the Health Secretary said: ‘Nationally, our emergency departments are still maintaining a high level of performance and Scotland’s A&E waiting times have consistently outperformed other areas of the UK for at least 20 months.’

Scottish Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar said: ‘These are staggering claims. Immediate assessment units like this are simply hidden A&E waiting lists.

‘These patients face a postcode lottery in terms of the care they will receive. It cannot be right that the length of time a patient waits for treatment is measured if they go through one door in a hospital but not another.

‘Ministers are in denial about NHS mismanagement and it is patients and staff who lose out.’ Speaking about the revelation the Government paid for an NHS England taskforce, Mr Sarwar added: ‘This is an astonishing development.

‘That the NHS is in crisis in England shows you can’t trust the Tories with the NHS but it is worrying that a taskforce is having to be called in. Shona Robison has to explain this immediately.’

A British Red Cross spokesman said: ‘In Glasgow, we transport patients home from hospital and provide the support they need to settle back safely at home.

‘We have worked with the health board to provide this service for a number of years and know it makes a real difference in terms of keeping people from staying in hospital unnecessarily.’

Last night, a spokesman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde admitted the unit was under ‘unprecedented demand’ but insisted the IAU was ‘a first-class facility’. He added: ‘We did have for a short time a number of patients we were unable to move to a cubicle, however they did remain under the care of the clinical team at all times.

‘The unit has been exceptionally busy and at peak times of unprecedented demand patient expectations may not be met but we continue to focus on delivering the best levels of safe patient care we can.

‘It is common practice to work with colleagues from other hospitals and the Health Department.

‘We work with colleagues from the Government – and worked with colleagues in NHS England – and will do so to identify approaches that could help us cope better with extra patient demands.’

Miss Robison said: ‘This week has been a demanding time for the QEUH and we are working closely with the local team to support a prompt recovery and support sustainable improvements in A&E and the IAU.

‘Work by the support team has shown signs of improvement. When changes were trialled, staff reported that patients were being triaged within ten minutes of arrival and assessed within the hour.

‘We will continue to work with the local team to smooth out the working practices to ensure these are sustained through periods of peaks and troughs.’

Comment – Page 16

‘Postcode lottery in terms of care’