Patients suffer worst ever winter for A&E admission delays

Emergency patients had the worst winter on record for being admitted to NHS hospitals in England, with nearly 200,000 waiting at least four hours.

Figures from the health service showed a near five-fold increase in the number of A&E patients suffering admission delays over the past five years.

Between December 2016 and February 2017 a total of 195,764 patients waited at least four hours to be admitted to hospital from A&E, up from 40,791 in 2011/12.

The figure is the highest since records began and marks a sharp rise on the winter months last year when 134,576 patients missed the four-hour target.

Total emergency admissions to NHS hospitals in England rose from 1.3 million in winter 2011/12 to 1.44 million in winter 2016/17.

Extreme waiting times also reached record levels, as 1,877 patients were forced to wait at least 12 hours before being admitted to hospital from A&E this winter, compared with 375 the previous year.

Research suggests hospitals are creaking under the weight of demand. A&E departments had to close their doors to ambulances almost twice as often this winter compared with the previous three years, a report from the Nuffield Trust showed.

The number of ambulance diverts in place at hospitals in England hit 478 for the three-month period from December to February, compared with an average of 249 over the same period in 2013/14, 2014/15 and 2015/16.

The number of days lost to so-called “bed-blockers” also hit record levels in England this winter. A total of 577,195 days were lost through delayed transfers of care from December to February, compared with 471,780 in winter 2015/16.

Patients suffer worst ever winter for A&E admission delays

NHS hospitals urged to show security videos to sufferers ahead of admission

Individuals will be encouraged to ask to be turned in their beds when they are unpleasant. Photograph: Alamy

Hospitals are to be encouraged to give airline security-type movies to individuals before they are admitted for remedy in an energy to cut down on avoidable suffering from bed sores, lack of hygiene and failure to take medicine.

Patients will be recommended on troubles such as taking medication in accordance to prescriptions and suitable hygiene measures, and encouraged to examine whether personnel have washed their hands.

They will also be urged to ask regardless of whether they can be turned in their beds when they truly feel unpleasant, below a new security campaign developed to change the culture inside of parts of the NHS.

Jeremy Hunt, the well being secretary, has published data on every single hospital in the nation, rating their security on 7 counts like inspection specifications, staffing levels and infection management. It is portion of a campaign to inspire a lot more openness and transparency in the NHS in the wake of the Mid Staffordshire scandal.

A evaluation of whistleblowing procedures has also been confirmed. Hunt presented figures suggesting that 29 of the 141 acute trusts in England are not open and truthful about their security performance and 87 are just “Okay”.

Hunt said there are twelve,000 avoidable deaths in the NHS every single 12 months and this have to be minimize by half inside of three many years. Unsafe care is triggering “immeasurable” harm to sufferers and families and costing hospitals millions of pounds in litigation and in placing issues correct.

Sir David Dalton, chief executive of Salford Royal Hospital Foundation Believe in, who is foremost the transparency campaign, explained the NHS should learn from airlines who have to demonstrate a safety video prior to every takeoff.

“Airlines do this on every single single event to engage their passengers in what they think to be really important.”

The trust running Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals in London is currently creating such a video. Other people will be anticipated to comply with suit.

Sir Robert Francis, the lawyer who led the official inquiry into the disastrous care at Mid Staffs, is to perform an independent review into the treatment of whistleblowers inside of the NHS. It is due to report in November.

He warned that every single time workers heard a whistleblower say they had been handled badly, other people would be deterred from speaking up. “I consider this demands to be modified fairly rapidly,” he explained. “We require a culture in which ‘I want to report this’ is the imagined foremost in the mind of any NHS worker who has issues – a culture the place concerns are listened to and acted upon.”

Mid Staffs had shown the “appalling consequences for sufferers in which there is a ‘closed ranks’ culture”, mentioned Francis.

Hunt said the NHS had come a prolonged way since Mid Staffs but there have been nevertheless also numerous cases exactly where staff concerns have been ignored. New measures would tackle this head on, he mentioned.

NHS hospitals urged to show security videos to sufferers ahead of admission