UK: Patients’ lives at risk in NHS hospital wards 'on brink of collapse'

Telegraph - UK ^ | September 12, 2012 | Stephen Adams

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Some hospitals narrowly avoid “catastrophe” every weekend, research by the Royal College of Physicians has found, because doctors’ shifts are limited by the European Working Time Directive and they do not want to work anti-social hours [night shift].

Some are “struggling to cope” with the volume of older patients.Many are discharged in the middle of the night or shunted around “like parcels” to free beds for new arrivals.

If the problem is not tackled there will be more tragedies like the Mid Staffs scandal,in which up to 1,200 mainly elderly patients died from substandard care. A radical reorganisation of the NHS is needed, according to the college. It may include shutting the worst-performing hospitals to expand care at better ones, with more staff coverage at nights and weekends.

The Hospitals on the Edge report warns...

• Four in 10 doctors surveyed said that staff shortages were jeopardising patient care

• One in four was concerned about the impact of the Working Time Directive, with one warning that “weekends and bank holidays function on a skeleton staff of doctors – very dangerous”

• Doctors are reluctant to work unsociable hours, leaving one in 10 consultant posts in emergency medicine vacant

• Over-65s account for seven in 10 beds, but the “the system continues to treat older patients as a surprise, at best, or unwelcome, at worst”.

.....“What we’ve seen over the past year or so is that a number of hospitals are on red alert or black alert. A black alert used to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Now hospitals are on black alert three or four times a year.

“This has been coming on for a while. The system can’t cope much longer, and we need to radically rethink how we provide the care for acute medical patients, particularly the elderly.”.....

[ri4dc]

” .. we need to radically rethink how we provide the care for acute medical patients, particularly the elderly.”

Why not just give them a pill. No need for expensive treatment. ObamaCare has this all figured out.

[Straight Vermonter]

At least they don’t have to put up with a capitalist system where doctors amputate a limb just to make a few bucks.

[DrC]

Note that the NHS never cuts BENEFITS to its citizens; they merely cut payments to providers, a la Obamacare. This article describes the natural (read: unavoidable) consequence of persistently underfunding providers.

[sakic]

I was recently in one of the most respected hospitals in NY. They almost killed me with incompetence. This is not the first time this has happened. The worst was around twenty years ago.

Other systems suck. Ours is not the slightest bit better.

Having govt run it is bad. Having insurance companies run it is every bit as bad.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Which boils down to no benefit to either the patient or the providers.

Another tragic example of socialism (it doesn’t work).