Matthew,

You are not the only one!

Our Trust has been on Red/Amber Bed Alert since late October and this has had a significant impact on the ED (particularly as manifested by our performance against the Four Hour Standard).  In fact we our just starting a two day visit by external consultants, paid for by the PCT, to look in to what is happening to Emergency Care.

We watch our figures very closely and although our attendances were much the same during October and November we did see a rise in December of about 5% on last year.  Our admissions rate isn’t up that much but the really increase in admissions seems to have come via the GPs.  Also, there is clearly a problem getting people home again.

Because of the bed problems we are suffering the problem of ‘boarding’ in the ED and all the impact that has on the department.  We have started collecting the number of minutes of boarded patients we have each day to show how much work we (mostly nurses) are doing on patients who should already have been admitted (we allow the hospital 30 minutes to find a bed and then we start counting).

Simon

I'd be surprised if we're unique here, but we seem to have had a bit of a shortage of beds this winter. Before I checked the figures I attributed this to the cold snap, the flu prevelance (and the post flu pneumonia which we'd seen quite a lot of) and a couple of other things going around including norovirus. Oddly, when I checked our figures though, not only are A and E attendances not up, but emergency admissions are down slightly on last year (although elective admissions are up). Anyone else in a similar situation?

Matt Dunn