23
Nov 2021
Patients in Bristol face longest wait in England for hospital bed
It has emerged that patients at a Bristol hospital trust are facing longer waits for urgent treatment than anywhere else in England.
Last month, nearly 600 people needing urgent care at Weston General Hospital and Bristol Royal (USBW) Infirmary waited longer than 12 hours for a bred.
The hospital trust said slow processes in discharging patients had led, in part, to the delays.
According to NHS England, in October there were more than 7,059 people in England waiting longer than 12 hours to admitted to hospitals from emergency departments. Of those, a significant portion, 594, were at Weston NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals Bristol.
The trust’s interim medical director Dr Emma Redfern, said “We’ve got very strict infection control guidance where patients with Covid have to be managed in a different ward to those without.
“We have a slow discharge process, as you know, so all that is impacting on the ability for patients to move out of the emergency department in the timeframe we’d like them to move out, leading to delays and backlogs.”
The problem has led to ambulances queuing outside accident and emergency departments, which unions say is having a big impact.
Unison South West’s Shane Clarke said “The problem is when those ambulances are at hospitals, they are not out responding to those 999 calls and when they are coming back to hospital, undoubtedly those patients are having long waits in the back of ambulances.”
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Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.
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