Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust under fire: Ambulance waits rising elsewhere (From The Westmorland Gazette)
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Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust under fire: Ambulance waits rising elsewhere
12:59pm Wednesday 14th December 2011 in Health
AMBULANCE waiting problems at Royal Lancaster Infirmary, revealed by The Westmorland Gazette, are echoed elsewhere in England, the BBC said.
Data provided by the 11 ambulance services showed all were experiencing difficulties handing over patients.
Hospitals are supposed to take charge of them within 15 minutes of the ambulance arriving, but some are missing this in over half of cases.
At RLI, trust boss Tony Halsall has admitted this sometimes extended to two and a half hours.
Elsewhere, ambulance trusts report waits of an hour are not uncommon, delaying crews from attending other 999 calls.
Paramedics are left waiting with patients until a nurse or doctor can take over. In the worst cases, ambulance crews are diverted to other hospitals.
North West Ambulance Service Trust said in the past two years, 26 of the region’s 33 hospitals have seen ambulance waiting times rise.
gadgetgadget says...
4:00pm Wed 14 Dec 11
Hate to say I told you so but UHMBT were made aware this would be a problem during the WGH Acute Services closure consultation, the Health Scrutiny Committee were made aware this would be a problem during that process - sadly they believed the BS being fed out by UHMBT and didn't listen to professional and public concerns.
As a result lives have no doubt been jeopardized and our MP is right to be asking the coroner to get involved in assessing the knock-on effects from the move of A&E/Acute services from WGH to RLI.
As I've said elsewhere on this site, A&E in RLI is not equipped at present to cope with the current workload (that's not a criticism of the medical staff) but of the management who failed to put in place capacity to deal with the extra input first.
With the Xmas "silly" season almost upon them it will be very sad and an even more serious issue during that period. God only knows what's gonna happen but I fear for anyone being rushed to RLI over the Xmas period if it's already swamped.