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The meltdown at Britain’s National Health Service descends into absurdity. Ambulances carrying patients in urgent need of medical care are being told to wait outside hospital emergency departments in order to meet an NHS pledge that all patients will be treated within four hours of admission. Paramedics are babysitting seriously ill patients in mobile waiting rooms.
Today’s Observer reports the scandal.
Those affected by 'patient stacking' include people with broken limbs or those suffering fits or breathing problems. An Observer investigation has also found that some wait for up to five hours in ambulances because A&E [accident and emergency] units have refused to admit them until they can guarantee to treat them within the time limit. Apart from the danger posed to patients, the detaining of ambulances means vehicles and trained crew are not available to answer new 999 calls because they are being kept on hospital sites.
Last night the practice was condemned by doctors and ambulance union leaders and was described as a 'scandalous distortion of practice' by one MP. Dr Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, called it 'absurd, entirely inappropriate and unacceptable'.
Obviously, ambulances holding patients outside hospitals cannot react to incoming emergency calls.
Perhaps the most tragic incident to highlight a crisis that has been escalating for years is that of Luke Gallimore. He was 16 and already on a hospital ward being treated for leukaemia when his condition dramatically worsened in July 2004. His doctor called for an ambulance to take him 300 yards from his ward at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire to its intensive care unit. Luke had to wait two hours. He slipped into a coma and died 16 days later.
There is no guarantee that, had the ambulance arrived more quickly, Luke would have survived. But, his consultant, Dr Keiran Lennon, was clear from the start that the call was 'extremely urgent' and 'absolutely critical'. Meanwhile, three ambulances were parked outside the hospital's A&E unit a mile away, but were unable to leave because casualty staff had refused to accept their patients, one of whom had an eye injury.
On almost 15,000 occasions in London last year, over an hour elapsed between the time an ambulance arrived at a hospital to deliver a patient and the time it was ready to respond to the next emergency. It should take a maximum of 10 minutes.
This is yet another instance of unintended, perverse consequences of government policy. An initiative aimed at guaranteeing improved service actually created incentives to undermine patient care.
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