Sussex hospital bosses ask experts how to cut waiting times

5:20pm Wednesday 20th February 2013 in News By Siobhan Ryan

Hospital bosses have called in experts from the Department of Health after waiting times for patients in accident and emergency departments spiralled.

The Emergency Care Intensive Support Team (IST) visited the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath to offer advice on how to improve the flow of patients.

It is the first time Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust has called in the team for help.

The trust says it is dealing with more patients than ever before, which means it is a struggle to provide enough beds for people needing to be admitted to hospital.

This has meant long waits in A&E of more than 12 hours for 25 patients during the past five months, while a further 1,328 waited between four and 12 hours for a bed to become available.

The most recent figures available showed in the week ending February 10, 87 patients were left waiting between four and 12 hours.

The hospital aims to have provided patients with a bed within four hours.

In a message to staff, trust interim chief executive Chris Adcock said: “For some time we have been struggling to maintain flow through the hospital and discharge enough patients back to the community.

“At times like this it is important to explore all options to improve things and get an independent, expert assessment of the situation.

“We all want to provide a quality of care and experience for our patients of which we can be proud and we cannot carry on as we are, fire-fighting our way through most days.”

Working on improvements

The trust has not had a formal response from the IST following its visit, but has been given some suggestions to help it come up with a plan to tackle the problem.

Mr Adcock said part of the problem was that not enough patients were being discharged each day to free up beds for those needing to be admitted.

He said staff were already working hard to improve the situation and all departments and teams in the trust had their part to play.

He said: “I absolutely recognise how hard and flexibly people are working and I want to say thank you for just getting on with the job in the face of such relentless pressure.”

The IST returned to the trust last week and said progress was being made but there was still more to do to get the hospitals back on track.

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Comments(9)

still waiting says...
5:41pm Wed 20 Feb 13

You can bet a pound to a penny that the job descriptions of all the senior managers concerned contain something on the lines of being able to manage health sector-related large organisations that derive the lion's share of their income by way of grant from the Exchequer (or, put another way, they are required to be good at running the NHS). And doubtless, when applying for these (frequently not under-remunerated posts) the applicants have assured the interview panels that they are the best person for the job & know what they are doing, etc, etc. So, given this, why do they need to keep calling in other "experts"? Or am I missing something?

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Morpheus says...
7:19pm Wed 20 Feb 13

Could the answer be as simple as "more beds"? Do we need experts to work this out?

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wendy-uk says...
7:32pm Wed 20 Feb 13

No need to ask experts: 1) Start utilising the A&E department at the Princess Royal in Haywards Heath instead of automatically taking everyone, even Haywards Heath residents, to Brighton. 2) A large percentage of those in the waiting room in Brighton A&E are drunk. Send them home.

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qm says...
10:07pm Wed 20 Feb 13

If the clinical staff were properly resourced and allowed to get on with their jobs instead of massaging KPI's to make self-interested managers look good, there would be little or no requirement for external intervention. Additionally, if the right KPIs were being applied, the answers to any issues would be readily available. Instead, KPIs are applied as a weapon against 'those that do' and wrongly applied are as insidious a mechanism as you can impose on any organisation!

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mimseycal says...
11:21pm Wed 20 Feb 13

I was in A&E at the County not too long ago with one of my daughters. I was rather perplexed by the number of uniformed NHS staff of various descriptions in and around the nurses station; which put me in mind of a tin of sardines. Most of them were looking over each others shoulders, reading various computer screens, glancing at rosters or waving pieces of paper about.

And yes, there were patients on trolleys outside occupied cubicles and no, it wasn't a Saturday night but a Monday afternoon.

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george smith says...
7:39am Thu 21 Feb 13

I had the misfortune a couple of years back to have to go to A & E, I was not impressed, it took seven hours. Most seemed seasoned users, one helpful young man from London advised me that unless you start making a nuisance of yourself you will never get seen. The only person who showed any signs of any care was the woman in the plaster room. And I gather she was far down the pecking order.

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Tailgaters Anonymous says...
8:45am Thu 21 Feb 13

Recent experience at another Sussex hospital recently showed staff working their socks off but any emergency causes a change in priorities, so it's a bit like a greasy pole. No-one - patient, relatives, nursing or medical staff -knows when procedures will take place.
A serious emergency blows the whole structure apart and compounds the hours wasted waiting.
Yet there are still some who wander the corridors with the same piece of paper aimlessly!

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Joshiman says...
1:50pm Thu 21 Feb 13

Build special drunk rooms with urinals and lock the doors until they sober up in the mornings.Then charge them say £50 for their stay.

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qm says...
4:09pm Thu 21 Feb 13

In support of some of the comments above from an online newspaper site today:

"Pensioner, 69, died in hospital toilet after gall bladder operation 'because NHS targets led to confusion over who was treating him'"

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