Underperforming NHS hospitals ‘are being dragged in for Cobra-style meetings’
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More than a dozen underperforming hospitals are being dragged in for emergency meetings with ministers in a bid to tackle the handover delay crisis, it was reported today.
Bosses from 15 NHS sites, including in Birmingham, Leicester and the South West, have been summoned for talks to set out ways they can discharge patients faster to make space in hospitals.
The Cobra-style meetings are said to be reminiscent of those seen during the Covid pandemic, which put plans in place to tackle the national emergency.
The 15 trusts are logging nearly half of all the ambulance delays nationwide, despite England having around 200 trusts.
The crisis has seen ambulances queue for 26 hours outside of hospitals, heart attack patients wait three hours for paramedics and more than 1,000 harmed a day due to delays.
Ministers are expected to call in central administrators to hospitals that fail to show a swift improvement in their handover delays ahead of winter.
Officials have warned that the NHS crisis will only worsen in the coming weeks, as an influx of Covid and flu is expected to see thousands more Britons admitted.
Health Minister Robert Jenrick said the Government ‘should not be tolerant of those parts of the NHS which are underperforming’.
Ambulance response times recovered slightly in August but the time taken for paramedics to arrive on the scene was still well above targets
Emergency unit data shows that three in 10 Britons were forced to wait longer than four hours in A&E departments in August, while nearly one thousand per day waited for 12 hours
Health Minister Robert Jenrick said the Government ‘shouldn’t be tolerant of those parts of the NHS which are underperforming’
A source told The Times that ministers are holding the meetings with the NHS bosses from the worst-performing hospitals.
They aim to make a plan to discharge patients more quickly, such as by using ‘virtual wards’ — which enable medics to monitor patients from their homes using mobile technology.
The NHS says discharging delays, from the bed-blocking crisis, are piling pressure on bed capacity.
This meant an average of 13,000 beds in England were occupied when they didn’t need to be.
The knock-on effects see ambulances facing hours-long queues as medics scramble to find space inside for their patient.
And around 1,000 A&E attendees per day were waiting more than 12 hours for a space in a ward in August.
The difficulties discharging patients has been pinned on the social care crisis — with too few staff available to look after those recovering at home, forcing the NHS to keep them in wards.
It comes as Dr Coffey yesterday told a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham that there is too much ‘variation’ in patients experience with the NHS.
Ambulance handovers are supposed to take place in 15 minutes, with none taking more than half an hour.
But statistics show that University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, the worst offender, logged 6,872 waits of more than one hour, representing five per cent of the national total.
For comparison, Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, the 15th worst trust for the delays, logged 2,571 — two per cent of the total.
Mr Jenrick said the Government ‘shouldn’t be tolerant of those parts of the NHS which are underperforming’.
The former Treasury and Housing Minister told a Policy Exchange fringe event that dozens of hospitals are failing to treat patients in a timely way, while others nearby were logging significantly fewer delays.
Mr Jenrick said: ‘The statistics speak for themselves: 45 per cent of the delays that we see and handing over ambulances at emergency departments across the country are in 15 NHS hospital trusts.’
He said ministers are working with hospitals that are failing to deliver acceptable levels of care to raise standards ‘very quickly’.
‘And urgent and emergency care I think is probably the most pressing ones of those – because we have such a short period ahead of us to get the NHS into the right place ahead of the winter,’ he said.
NHS England figures show 6.8million patients were in the queue for routine hospital treatment in July, equivalent to one in eight people. Nearly 380,000 have been waiting for over one year
Cancer patients starting treatment within two months of an urgent referral increased from 59.9 per cent in June to 61.6 per cent in July. But the figure is below the 85 per cent standard, which hasn’t been hit since 2014
But he called for ‘boosterism’ to be put to one side, noting that the shortage of doctors and nurses was the key issue for the health service.
The NHS is subject to ‘too many targets’ and better judgment should be used in the future when imposing them.
However, the worst-ranked hospitals that are ‘not delivering an acceptable level of care for their patients’ should be trying to better improve their rating.
The Telegraph reported that he said: ‘This autumn and winter is going to be one of the most challenging that the NHS has known in its history.
‘[I want] to be very straightforward about the challenges that are faced by the NHS right now and not to attempt to sugarcoat those.’
Mr Jenrick admitted the NHS will need more cash in the coming years due to the UK’s demographics — with an ageing population set to see more Britons with chronic illness requiring treatment.
He called for NHS reform to make it more efficient, such as by using more technology.