Sending London patients to Yorkshire

[DeRigueurMortis]

It's been reported that due to capacity issues in London there is a proposal to send patients to Yorkshire.

London has more beds per capita than anywhere else in the country.

The nightingales have been dismantled.

In Yorkshire the rates have been high but (depending on north/south/east/west) brought into control though harsh lockdown. Those in tier 2 have been buggered by being inundated by Covid tourism and will be tier 3/4.

So Yorkshire is on the verge of it's own disaster with less beds per person than London and being overwhelmed by London cases before the local community can get a bed in their hospital.

Is it right that this should happen?

@JayAlfredPrufrock

I repeat, the reason folk are pissed off is that they’ve been in a high level of lockdown all through the summer and autumn. We’ve been like Dickensian characters with our noses pressed up against the windows of the South whilst they feasted and made merry. The number of posts and letters I’ve read about Northerners not abiding by the rules and that’s what they had high levels of COVID and more stringent lockdown.

What a load of crap. My area was one of the first back into restrictions and has stayed in them. It’s been rubbish. Do I think there has been differences in how London was treated? Yes. Do I think that means Londoners shouldn’t be put into empty beds in Yorkshire? No.

Ironic that we're called The United Kingdom

I've rarely seen a country so divided.

Did the overflow go anywhere else, or were people just sent home to die? Nothing would surprise me to be honest! Genuine question.

I dont know, maybe it wouldn't surprise me, attitudes are kind of different here, fatalistic I suppose. We did have ambulance queues. The M62 would help if they were moved though. It connects a huge urban area, is heavily policed and so it would be easy to shift patients about quickly, especially at night, say between Leeds and Manchester and all the cities and towns around them

Actually I think it was closed off for freight only at night when the food was running out in March. Those shortages were really bad here. The M62 is our lifeline in more ways than one.

Wow, some of the posts on here are outrageous. People are talking about numbers and beds and forgetting these are actual people. Family and friends of someone. And those people cannot be admitted or stay in a hospital so need to be moved to another to free up space for someone else. Someone else who is an actual person with friends and family too. What is the alternative? Leaving one of them to die on a trolley in a corridor? Or in the back of an ambulance? Taking their last breath with no dignity in death? And people are on here making it a north/south issue? Saying it’s not fair to use our beds in case we need them? Saying but we’re not allowed to go to London hospitals? Take a long hard look at yourselves. Whatever COVID has created, this tops it all it really does

I don’t think those posting are doctors or nurses @ObliviouslyIgnorant - don’t lose faith in the NHS. I’m sure those working for the NHS in Yorkshire want to save as many lives as possible.

I didn’t say beds shouldn’t be available for everyone, I was merely pointing out why folk are understandably pissed off.

I've rarely seen a country so divided.

And we were so united back in March and April. We need to get back to that !!!

I don't begrudge people being moved anywhere But Surely the point is more fundamental.. Why can't the all the country be fairly treated? ... Ie be provided with equal numbers of beds per head of population...their is a huge population along the m62 and its under funded and has been for years. This covid crisis is showing the inequality and its not being corrected. In fact its been made worse in some cases.

Areas of the North have been in highest tier for most of the year because of lack of beds.. If they'd had the same number of beds per popn as London they could have been top tier for less time.

The government chose to keep the SE open for to long as it seems its far more important to keep resteraunts, museums and cinemas open there than say G Manchester where they have hardly been open this year.
I pressume they are talking about Yorkshire rather than GM to transfer too as the politics of sending people to GM considering how Boris has treated that region and took money off the table for Andy Burnham would just be laughable...

Of course it makes sense to move patients to where there is capacity.

BUT firstly, this is an absolute horror of a situation from an infection control scenario. The worst cases of hospital based infections appear to be in the large centralised hospitals - the policy of shutting small local hospitals over the past few years clearly hasn't worked and now we're risking infecting these remaining low case hospitals because we lack bed capacity.

Secondly, in the last 30 years we've gone from having 300k beds to 145k beds despite the population increasing by 10m in that time. We've got one of the lowest beds per 1,000 population in Europe and similarly on nurse and doctor numbers per 1,000 too. There needs to be serious questions asked about what funding the NHS means in terms of cost and capacity.

@Flaxmeadow

I've rarely seen a country so divided.

And we were so united back in March and April. We need to get back to that !!!

I think the Tier policy has divided us all. It seemed fair at the time I suppose. Now it appears to have only created resentment.

if nothing else, this thread has finally put to bed the MN myth that people are so much more friendly up north.

Two things....

• Firstly, most Londoners have obeyed the rules. The pictures of people "fleeing" for Christmas are a very small minority. I can't remember the last time we had someone in our house. The reason the new infectious strain has spread so quickly in London is down to three factors - interconnectedness, population density and high levels of deprivation in some areas.

• Secondly, the pattern of the last peak was that London was hit hard, first. Then cases in London decreased and other areas came under strain. You might want to remember that in formulating your "no regional transfers" plan.

...thinking about my post about the M62. If the London patients were brought to West Yorkshire, then it would mean they would also have access to other large hospitals and in nearby in Grt Manc and so on. Maybe that's why? Easy to move around from WY if hospitals become full, theres another one nearby

And we were so united back in March and April. We need to get back to that !!!

No, we weren't. The media glorifying an old man who walked a bit does not make a united nation, it makes a scared nation looking for a bit of joy. The division was still there, just painted over with a good story.

Other countries appear to have taken a national approach to restrictions, though, I can't say that I've read enough about regional approaches.

Fuck there's some nasty people about. Fortunately the hospital beds don't belong to them and patients will go where there is capacity. As they always have done. And that is that.

@happytoday73

I don't begrudge people being moved anywhere But Surely the point is more fundamental.. Why can't the all the country be fairly treated? ... Ie be provided with equal numbers of beds per head of population...their is a huge population along the m62 and its under funded and has been for years. This covid crisis is showing the inequality and its not being corrected. In fact its been made worse in some cases.

Areas of the North have been in highest tier for most of the year because of lack of beds.. If they'd had the same number of beds per popn as London they could have been top tier for less time.

The government chose to keep the SE open for to long as it seems its far more important to keep resteraunts, museums and cinemas open there than say G Manchester where they have hardly been open this year.
I pressume they are talking about Yorkshire rather than GM to transfer too as the politics of sending people to GM considering how Boris has treated that region and took money off the table for Andy Burnham would just be laughable...

All valid points, but it's still not the fault of Londoners themselves that this has been allowed to happen and the other posters (not you, you say you don't begrudge people being moved) condemning them to death because they're pissed off with Govt policy is immoral and sickening.

About the nightingales. They are inspired by the Wuhan hospitals. They built over 10 of these temporary hospitals around the city. The difference was the outbreak was limited around the city. And China is a very large country. They move hospital staff from other parts to these new hospitals. We do that with police, for example. I remember hampshire police helping with london riots. But of course our politicians aren’t looking at staffing these nightingales except they are good for publicity!

An equivalent here would be we get greek or Italian doctors and nurses to our london nightingales because they had no COVID cases!

We weren't terribly happy when Macron closed his border to the UK. We want it both ways it seems. We can't even unite within England. It's not surprising that we left the EU. 'The truth will always out' as they say. I think some of the attitudes displayed on here explain the mentality that resulted in the vote for Brexit. PS, London voted to remain.

I don't think the Nightingale at Harrogate is open for patients, as in people who need step down care or critical care, I think it has been used for diagnostic imaging type stuff.
I think step down beds are largely being provided by private care homes across the region.
Acute and critical care is still being provided by the hospitals as far as I'm aware.
As far as I am aware, Yorkshire and Humber currently has no ECMO beds, if you had a relative who would benefit from such a bed, would you decline it as it isn't in Yorkshire, so you would be taking a bed from another county ?

Oh ffs there's always someone wanting to make it about Brexit and having a dig at those who voted leave. Give it a bloody rest. Or take it to a brexit thread. So desperately boring.

It's a Tory government in power. The past 10 years I think? Did you vote Tory in Yorkshire?

@Kaliorphic

Oh ffs there's always someone wanting to make it about Brexit and having a dig at those who voted leave. Give it a bloody rest. Or take it to a brexit thread. So desperately boring.

It's actually very revealing as it displays the attitude commonly displayed by Brexiters. It's absolutely relevant.

I pressume they are talking about Yorkshire rather than GM to transfer too as the politics of sending people to GM considering how Boris has treated that region and took money off the table for Andy Burnham would just be laughable.

Burnham was asking for more money per head of population but only for Grt Manc. More than Merseyside, West and South Yorks etc asked for and while we all wanted lockdown in the North as soon as possible and he was the one bloody well delaying it!!! He wasn't popular everywhere in the North and not even everywhere in GM.

I doubt it's anything to do with him and people move hospitals all the time between those areas anyway. They are for vaccinations ATM.

It often happens. It depends where the necessary beds are. How often do you read about kids being transferred miles away as the right hospital is London and they live in Manchester! Cases where prem babies have to be transferred miles away as that NICU is full so they go elsewhere. That’s the case here

And not all nightingales have been dismantled. It maybe that staffing is better in some areas than others so in those areas nightingales can continue

Your posts smacks of nimbyism