When are they going to start thinking about opening hospitals up for regular appointments

[Willow4987]

Surely they need to start discussing this

The amount of people not being seen for routine appts must be huge by now, let alone people being screened for cancer etc

I’ve seen it mentioned in several places now that non-Covid areas of hospitals are empty

I know that they are protecting the NHS but at some stage surely they need to re-start

I’m also not sure why they aren’t using the nightingales for all Covid cases, a form of isolation that would allow other hospitals to get back up and running again

They are starting from 11th May at the large hospital where I work.
They will continue to do a lot of appointments over the phone but it will be a very gradual reopening of outpatients clinics.
Elective surgery is still off the cards until they have a lot more ppe.

Hospitals are already doing this but everything is so fucked up already it will take months plus social distancing has to be included in all arrangements. Don't expect a traditional appointment any time soon unless it's critically urgent.

The nightingales are not hospitals, they are field hospitals. So if a Covid positive patient goes into renal failure and requires dialysis he wouldn’t be able to have it at a Nightingale hospital because it won’t be equipped.Same goes for other specialities.

We are expected at an appointment this Friday for DS2 - I was really surprised when they phoned to arrange it. Would have thought they would have waited a bit longer, as this is not urgent, and prioritised the PPE for more urgent cases, eg cancer.

I have an appointment next week for an ecg which came on Thursday. I was quite surprised it has come through now considering.

The NHS has already been putting plans into action to start services up again over the last two weeks. Essential services need to be stood up within the next 4 weeks. Local discretion needs to be used to include non essential services if the capacity is there. So as PPs have stated you should start to see regular appointments being rescheduled now

I have been given a new appt date for my ECG (originally scheduled for last week of March and moved twice before being put on hold indefinitely) so things definitely starting to move.

Oh that’s good!!! I’m waiting to reschedule an appointment at an allergy clinic for my son to be tested so hopefully that comes through when the hospital is up and running again

Lots of non essential work is starting to happen but most needs to be done remotely over telehealth. Things that can't will be prioritised for what's left of clinic space after hospital buildings have been carved up into red and green zones. Normal nhs won't resume for a very long time.

If Boris wasn't so fucking stupid as to start loosening lock down too fucking early, the NHS would soon be able to really ramp up some of the closed down services. Because he is doing his best to send us into second peak before we've even finished first peak, a lot of services won't be able to go live, because the structural changes in place to cope with peak will have to stay put.

There is huge amounts of work going on at Trusts with plans of how to reset and recover. The big issue for out patient appointments is how do we maintain social distancing, the cleaning that will have to happen between appointments, PPE requirements etc. Clinics will only be able to run at potentially 30% of previous capacity. There are thousands of outpatient appointments that were put on hold which now will have to be prioritised (changed to telephone calls/video calls if possible) along with the new referrals that keep coming in. There just isn’t the capacity to run face to face outpatient appointments in the way that we used to.

Are hospitals looking at rescheduling cancelled (routine ie not urgent) surgeries?

That will be one of the last bits. Because most operating theatres were converted into emergency ITUs. If lockdown had been maintained long enough for test, track, and isolate to work, then some of those could be converted back to theatres. As it hasn't, most trusts will be pretty reluctant to get rid of emergency ITU capacity just as a 2nd peak will be coming in. Also, most of the anaesthetists have been working lots of extra hours covering ITU. So they probably need a bit of a break (for sleep!) before diving into elective activity. By which time we'll be heading into the aforementioned second peak...

2 week wait appointments for cancer have continued throughout. It's really important not to spread false information.