Accident and Emergency Provision (North-East)
Debate between Tom Blenkinsop and Pat Glass(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Government targets say that no more than 5% of patients should wait longer than four hours in accident and emergency departments, yet on Monday 14 January, The Northern Echo reported that the North East Ambulance Service
“has admitted that it is struggling to meet demand, after an elderly Parkinson’s Disease sufferer waited 11 hours before being taken to hospital. North-East Ambulance Service (NEAS) NHS Trust bosses said a surge in winter-related call-outs meant it was having to prioritise patients. NEAS has apologised to 84-year-old Eileen Anderson, of Marton, Middlesbrough, after it emerged ambulances are queuing for hours at hospitals across the region before being able to hand over patients.”
Mrs Anderson is a constituent of mine, and although that may be an extreme example of the delays that are occurring, unfortunately, it is not an isolated incident.
Late last year, the health care regulator, the Care Quality Commission, reported that 33% of people spent more than four hours in A and E—that was before this winter—while research shows that the number of people waiting for A and E treatment in England has risen by 47,000. Those waiting times are the worst in almost a decade. Nationally, almost 1 million extra visits to A and E units across England were recorded by the Department of Health in 2010-11, with a doubling of trolley waits—people waiting in A and E for longer than four hours to be admitted—in a single year. A freedom of information request revealed that eight-hour trolley waits almost trebled between 2009 and 2011.
The CQC has warned that 17 hospitals are understaffed and cannot guarantee patients’ safety. The excellent James Cook university hospital, which serves many in my constituency, including Mrs Anderson, has said that delays in admitting patients are being caused by insufficient staff and a lack of available beds. My most recent information is that the hospital is holding weekly meetings with ambulance bosses in an attempt to alleviate delays. The trust should be praised for taking action, but the fact that action is necessary is indicative of a sorry state of affairs.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I have recently had a very unfortunate experience of the NHS involving admissions to A and E. Both my parents have been admitted to A and E over the past two months. Their care has been absolutely excellent—I could not criticise it at all—but staff took the opportunity to tell me that the staffing levels, particularly at weekends, in A and E and on wards is putting life at risk, which is surely a concern to us all.