DRI FAILURE
Derby's accident and emergency department failed
to meet the Government's four-hour waiting target
in June 2003. In March, the Government stated
that 90% of all patients should be seen and
treated within four hours. In June, 81%, or 5,855
of the 7,238 people who went to the department at
Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, were seen and treated
within four hours. |
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A & E
Hospital A&E
departments are turning away patients who might die,
because they are too expensive to treat. It means
ambulances carrying critically ill patients from 999
calls must travel further, because crews know the nearest
hospital trust will not take them. With the average
A&E admission costing £86, hospitals do not want to
bear the £300 cost of those with life-threatening
conditions. Health Department figures show the number of
casualty units taking the most dangerously ill has fallen
by 25% since Labour came to power.
Emergency units are given a set sum by the Government, no
matter how many patients they treat, and routinely go
over budget. But as the NHS ran up debts of more than
£1billion, savings had to be made. A Health Department
spokes man said, "Life-threatening emergencies often
require a wide range of specialist services. It can be
appropriate to concentrate major services on one site,
rather than having multiple sites." Other figures
show the number of hospital beds is also down. In 2003
there were 399 per 100,000 people. That fell to 376 in
2006. (Source: Sunday People, Jun/07)
The quality of care given by Derby's
accident and emergency services has been ranked as the
second worst in the region. The findings were revealed in
a report by the Healthcare Commission, which assessed 170
of the country's 202 A&E departments, including
Derbyshire Royal Infirmary and Derbyshire Children's
Hospital's emergency department. The health watchdog
checked hospitals on the length of time taken to give
pain relief to children and patients with broken hips, as
well as when tests on patients with paracetamol overdoses
were given.
The findings, which are based on figures between 2003 and
2005, also looked at the waiting times and the
cleanliness at each hospital. In Derby, 38% of children
who were in moderate to severe pain were given pain
relief within an hour of arriving at A&E, the
second-worst performance of seven hospitals in the Trent
region. Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Royal Hospital
came top with 96%. Just over a third of A&E patients
with broken hips were given pain relief within an hour,
again placing the DRI second from bottom of the seven
hospitals.
Around 10% of patients were found to have spent four
hours or more in A&E between April and June 2004 but
the department, which sees 80,000 patients a year, came
top for cleanliness, scoring 100%. Kay Fawcett, the Derby
Hospital NHS Foundation Trust's director of nursing, said
that the results were "very disappointing" and
that improvements had included introducing a new
treatment guide for A&E nursing staff, allowing
nurses to give patients painkillers which doctors then
confirmed. Also, children are now being given painkillers
as nasal drops to prevent them failing to say how much
pain they are in to avoid injections. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)
A pensioner who crashed in a hospital car
park was rushed to A&E 20 miles away because there
was no doctor on duty to treat her. The 79-year-old hit a
tree at Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal, Cumbria,
but instead of being stretchered a few yards, paramedics
took her on a 25-minute trip to Royal Lancaster
Infirmary. (Source: Sunday People, Oct/07)
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