AIBU to wonder what the heck is going on in hospitals right now??

[Rinoachicken]

Before I start, I want to make it clear I am NOT blaming the hospital staff in any way.

13 hospitals have declared state of emergencies or whatever it is.

Why is everyone suddenly descending on A&E all over the country all in the same week? Has there been an outbreak of something I don't know about?

I don't get it. A&E is always stretched to the limit, but Why this sudden crisis all over the country?

Am I missing something??

Increasing demands on an already stretched service
Some A&e are down graded to minor injuries so work diverted to nearest a&e
Waiting on care packages for older adults can delay discharge
Shortage of a&e doctors

Please do think about staff working in these really demanding conditions

Tribeca to all frontline staff. You're very much in thoughts.

They've also built new hospitals in the past decade that rely on the fact that medicine has improved so patients are treated quicker and the beds free up quicker. The hospitals physically cannot hold as many people. However they have not allowed for the fact that our population is increasing and so there is more demand. Beds get blocked by people that cannot be discharged for social reasons or mental health reasons.

We are taking massive amount of emergency calls, they've increased over the last few months. Think 4000 calls in 24hrs. And that's just one ambulance service. I've never known it as busy

What I didn't know but is interesting regarding fractures is that broken bones etc are very low priority for ambulances. One person I know who worked in an emergency call centre said that 90% of the time a patient with a fracture can and should arrange their own transport to hospital without burdening ambulances! After I though about it for a while it made sense though, as ambulances are to save lives and a lot of fractures etc aren't life threatening, though they are painful.

For OP, I don't really have anything to contribute but YANBU to wonder. Could it simply be increases in population? The population has increased by several hundred thousand in the UK and I don't know if enough hospitals have been built to support this. Perhaps with Christmas and many GPs closed, it has become crunch time for many A and Es? If one was brave enough to declare a state of emergency many others teetering on the edge may have followed.

I hate posting this without links to back me up but the anecdotal reports I have read suggest there are fewer patients than this time last year but closed beds and E&E departments mean the hospitals can't cope with even a minor winter increase.

The big march that happened this summer, the attempt to create a political party focused on saving the NHS have all been about seeing this on the horizon and trying to stop it.

The cynic in me thinks the government don't care about the pains their deliberate actions cause because if they make it fall apart they have the perfect excuse to privatise and profit.

This needs to be seen globally its a social care and health issue.one cannot extract one from the other
Needs more joint working,money,and collaboration to achieve effective practice

My dd recently found a man collapsed in the street. She gave first aid and when ambulance ( car) arrived paramedic asked her to stay and assist her! As an ambulance would be ages. Man flatlined just as ambulance did arrive ( dc says over half an hour) she was holding medical equipment on him

He had jumped from the multi storey and died later that night

I'm horrified my dd who is 18 had to assist with a collapsed lung and injuries that bad because of a long long wait. She is traumatised by the whole thing but did get commended by police. ( much sympathy for this poor Young Man but my dd will be haunted by this for a long time)

And our ambulance service recently got fined for late responses

Because

1. too many bugs, people traveling abroad more, more tourists coming in i.e. even more bugs introduced
2. people getting drunk in Christmas and NY parties, having accidents etc??

I think the NHS spends many millions every year to treat drunk people or alcoholics. Quite a lot of them end up in A&E.

With all due respect chocorabbit,thats over simplistic and not the reason

I was wondering whether declaring a 'Major Incident' means that waiting times etc are excluded from the calculations as to whether they're meeting their targets etc?

Yep, that's been proposed, Tribeca.

It should be a good thing - except the way it's being done is a backdoor cut to NHS funding while claiming to increase it: slash social care funding to councils and hand over responsibility to the NHS, which has to do a much larger job with very little extra money.

I work for the NHS my local hospital is one of the ones that have called a state of emergency , its a combination of factors , time of the year ,cuts ( the cuts have been going on for years way before the Tory government came into power).And shockingly bad management of finances IMO NHS management only think in the short term ie we will close this ward to save money but not think about what will happen when patients need beds.

I think it's because it is really hard to get a GP appointment and many people can't/don't want to wait.

I made an appointment yesterday. I could do any time/would see any doctor. The earliest appointment they had was next Monday.

When you are ill, you generally need to see a doctor within a day or so. Agree that there are a lot of people who go to A&E unnecessarily. Something does need to be done.

Major incident is the formal process that allows incident plan to be initiated and request additional staff,cancel scheduled ops,ask existing staff to come in
The new health and social care act due April 2015 has frameworks for closer statutory working and intergration.as essentially health and social services are two huge services, conceived and initiated at different times with different legislation

The problem is that there is no single solution to fix the problem. GP hours need to be increased, it needs to be easier to get appointments in the evenings, at weekends and on bank holidays. Social care needs to be improved to stop bed blocking, such as reopening cottage hospitals for convalescence and increasing care in the community.

People need to be made more aware of the appropriate procedures for seeking medical attention, eg medicate at home, speak to a pharmacist if the symptoms aren't alleviated, then go to the GP.

Patients are no longer using A&E how it should be used, the amount of people we get attending who haven't seen their GP is crazy. A lot of people will see "oh well I couldn't get an appointment when I needed it so thought I'd come here instead".

Older people are putting off seeing GPs because of waiting times/being unable to get there etc etc so then end up being brought into A&E when things get drastically worse.

The cold weather contributes to colds, flu, D&V, Norovirus, broken limbs from slips and trips, car accidents, drunken accidents at Christmas parties and so on.

There is no single problem and no single solution and while the MPs see promises as a way to gain voters no changes will be made.

Are these things just cumulative?

-From visiting father in hospital, there are beds being lost due to mental health issues inc dementia etc after social services got squeezed?

-The GP contract am I right in my understanding that this meant GPS could get out of doing overtime/home visits?

-I am assuming this is very postcode driven as where we have always been able to drive to a local health centre to get an out of hours visit promptly and there has usually only been one person in front. So are people just being silly and going to A & E prematurely?

What we could do with is a freedom of information request of a breakdown of the types of problems people are going to A & E with.

Stealth privatisation of urgent care centres.

It's because the powers that be are trying to destroy our NHS. That's why. And they'e succeeding the fucking bastards.

Most of it has been said. Older population, cut backs, increased demands on GP often for non medical issues. The whole NHS is full; Gps, outpatients, hospitals, social services. Hospitals have had enough working at capacity and so have declared major incidents, to get heard and to shift the responsibility up to the government. If GPs could declare major incidents, they would be to. I don't have the solution but it's breaking point for the NHS and it's staff and patients.

They need to rewind the 'efficiency savings' that have happened since 2011 when the NHS was found to be one of the most cost efficient health services in the world and public satisfaction with the NHS was at a record high.

General Election coming up. People in Polls regularly say the NHS is their main priority. Therefore gives the media a brilliant opportunity to fill pages of newsprint/fill TV bulletins with tales of the NHS going wrong.
I do think though that (some) people use A and E in particular for things which are not actually emergencies.

pausingflatly think that you might have put your finger on the tipping point there, re social care cuts coming to a head.

sleeytea that's a good point, is it a fairly regular occurs car then and we just don't tend to know?