QA Hospital feels the strain after heatwaves as high bed occupancy leads to delays in care says chief executive Penny Emerit
A report issued before a hospital board meeting has revealed how the heatwaves have taken their toll on Queen Alexandra Hospital
Queen Alexandra Hospital is feeling the strain of the summer’s heatwaves, with high bed occupancy leading to delays in care.
The details come in a report prepared by Penny Emerit, the chief executive officer of Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, before a board meeting on Wednesday.
In the update to the board, Ms Emerit outlines that while the number of admissions has not gone up, the acuity - how ill patients are and how much care people need - is “well above” what is expected at this time of year.
The report says occupied beds are running about eight per cent above what is expected for this point of the summer in Portsmouth, equivalent to about 80 beds at QA. The trust board also oversees Isle of Wight NHS Trust. That trust is also about eight per cent above expected, which equates to about 30 beds there as it is a smaller organisation.
The higher bed occupancy and a delay in discharging patients who are ready to leave has affected the time it takes to see patients in accident and emergency (A&E).
Portsmouth is discharging 77.7 per cent of patients on the day they are declared ready - the remaining patients are part of a logjam in the system that has a knock-on effect in A&E.
The NHS’s overall target is that 95 per cent of A&E patients should be seen within four hours, although interim targets have been set to help trusts reach that, and the current goal is 78 per cent.
In Portsmouth the percentage of patients in casualty being seen within four hours dropped from 75.6 per cent in April to 73.4 per cent in July.
Speaking about Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight together Ms Emerit added: “Twelve-hour waits are a common issue directly attributable to full inpatient capacity and linked to the use of escalation capacity and corridor care.”
As revealed by NHS figures this summer, “corridor care” - defined as when patients are kept in areas that do not count as a “clinically appropriate and safe setting” for more than 45 minutes, not necessarily in a corridor - is also a problem at Queen Alexandra Hospital, as it is in several hospitals around the country.
Ms Emerit said: “Both trusts are using significantly more surge and escalation capacity than planned, including corridor care. We continue with chief executive chaired oversight of the impact of our corridor care plans.”
QA’s summer was not helped by the fact it had to declare a critical incident in June after its chillers broke down. A critical incident is an event which means hospital is not functioning properly - and in this case it saw some operations cancelled as operating theatres were too hot.
In a statement announcing that the incident was over on June 27, the hospital said that it was still “under significant pressure”, adding “We continue to see high demand, with increasing numbers of patients requiring urgent and emergency care.”
Fears will grow about how QA will cope with the increased pressure during the winter, as it is currently overcapacity at the moment.
Ms Emerit said: “We did not achieve the summer de-escalation we planned for, so we enter winter planning from a worse position than assumed.
“We need to recover ground before November, and we need length of stay improvement to materialise in reduced escalation. This requires a whole-hospital response within each Trust and a co-ordinated system response in each of our local communities.”