Posted on 04/15/2007 7:36:31 AM PDT by blam
Stretched hospitals separate mums and babies
By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph (UK)
Last Updated: 11:54pm BST 14/04/2007
Newborn twins and triplets are being separated from their mothers and sent to different hospitals as neonatal units face growing shortages in specialist care for premature babies.
Sarah Skates and Andy Scrace were separated from their twins, Kiera and Cameron
It means that most hospitals have no choice but to send families in three or four different directions, says one expert.
Neonatal units surveyed by Bliss, the premature baby charity, were full-up and unable to take new admissions for an average of almost one month out of six. Eight out of 10 units had to stop admitting new cases on at least one occasion, reveals research by the charity, to be published on Tuesday.
Babies are being transported an average of 126 miles for specialist care, with journeys of 200 or 250 miles not uncommon, the charity has previously reported.
Jane Hawdon, a consultant neonatologist at University College Hospital, London, said that she believed that most hospitals had faced the "heartbreaking" decision to send newborn twins and triplets to different hospitals. It left the mothers distraught and fathers and relatives facing marathon round trips.
She said: "It is bad enough when the mother and baby can't be together, but increasingly we do see sets of twins and particularly triplets being separated. Most busy maternity units would have at least one occasion a year when this happens. The units are working at maximum capacity. Everybody will move heaven and earth to try to keep the babies together, but in the end, if it is a matter of safety and we can't find cots for them in the same place, we have to separate them."
The proportion of multiple births in England and Wales has risen by 20 per cent in the past 15 years, with 15 out of every 1,000 pregnant women now giving birth to more than one child. Multiple births are linked to older women having babies and the increasing popularity of IVF.
Dr Hawdon said that when her own baby was born seven weeks early the child was about to be sent to a hospital in Canterbury until, at the last minute, a cot was found close to where she lives in London.
She said that units could only afford to recruit enough staff if they were running at full capacity. They were often forced to choose between running at a loss or "squeezing an extra baby in".
Her own intensive care unit - which has a capacity of 12 babies - took 18 babies over Christmas. Staff worked late, cancelled leave, borrowed equipment, and on one occasion were dispatched to a medical equipment supplier to buy extra stethoscopes.
Sarah Skates, from Dartford, Kent, gave birth to twins after 26 weeks of pregnancy. One was sent to a hospital in Norwich, the other to Surrey, both a considerable distance away, leaving Miss Skates "absolutely distraught" in a third hospital, sharing a ward with new mothers and babies.
Miss Skates, 28, was told that her twins, Kiera and Cameron, would both be sent to Norwich, but by the time the ambulance came back for Cameron, the place had gone. She said that the experience, now two years ago, was "incredibly lonely" - separating her not only from her babies, but from their father, who went to Norwich to stay with their son.
Dr Andrew Lyon, a consultant neonatologist from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: "I firmly believe that services are underfunded. We need both money and we need increased numbers of staff. In any situation where you separate mother and baby it is devastating, but with mulitple births you can be torn in a number of different ways."
Dr Lyon, who works in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, said it was inevitable that the NHS would experience peaks and troughs in neonatal care, and that every unit could not be geared up to take every case. But he said the findings from Bliss, which showed that, on average, units were unable to take new admissions for 24 days over six months, showed that more resources were needed.
The research, carried out for Bliss by the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford, examined neonatal services in the last six months of 2005 by surveying senior nurses and leading neonatal networks.
Bliss is campaigning for one-to-one nursing for babies in intensive care to be made mandatory, a standard it says just two per cent of units can currently provide.
Ivan Lewis, the minister at the Department of Health in charge of care services, said he acknowledged that, despite a 13 per cent rise in the number of cots available since 2003, "in some localities there are still concerns".
What a great system! I can hardly wait until John Edwards and Hillary Clinton bring it to this country.
It won't be long.
Too many free loaders, not enough paying customers.
And there are many who think the UK’s socialist medicine is a model for what should be done here in America. E.g. Hillary!care. “If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.”
Don’t they know that more taxes will solve everything?
Not everyone who does not have health coverage are freeloaders. I have not had coverage for 15 years and if I get sick, I die. Thankfully my son is getting close to the time when he will be able to live on his own if that does happen. Cheerio!
it seems their entire system is seriously failing. limited
staff to deliver babies and no room in the hospitals where
they are born to care for them. what a terrible situation.
Coming soon to a country near you, sadly.
Explosion of newborn Islamonazis?
How much worse can these daily stories get?
perhaps. it could just be a failing system that’s not able
to provide adequate care for those depending on the care.
I hope they are using child safety seats. In at least some places in the the US, you can't even take home you newborn baby without one. I'd bet it is the same in the UK.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article1652467.ece
Of course, C. diff. and MRSA infection rates went up astronomically, but they saved a few pence off the laundry bill!
Mark my words, the US will have a system like this -- HillaryCare -- and somehow, the John Edwards' of the world will work around a no-sue policy....and then we're all well and truly screwed.
Many of the British people I know just figure a $700 round-trip airfare from the UK to the US as the cost of proper medical care: that is, they come to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore or Sloane-Kettering in NYC or Emory in Atlanta when they’re sick enough for a hospital. This doesn’t work out very well if they’re in situations that demand emergency care, but when it’s surgery, or something long-term like cancer, they considr that the extra cost is well worth it. Better that than risking their lives in a Soviet-style English hospital.
"Cleaners at an NHS hospital have been told to turn over dirty bed sheets rather than use clean linen. Good Hope Hospital in Birmingham advised its staff to “top and tail” used sheets to cut the £500,000 annual laundry bill. "
Thanks for posting the link — I am a HTML dunderhead!
You're welcome. I learned HTML on Free Republic.
I never said they were.
What I said was there are too many freeloaders living off the medical system in this country and that it will eventually lead to a situation just like this article mentions.
Just because you don't have health coverage doesn't mean you don't pay your own way.
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