A&E

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.

A & E

Ambulance 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 Ł86, hospitals do not want to bear the Ł300 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 Ł1billion, 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)