Alec DoyleLocal Democracy Reporting Service
Emergency care in north Wales is in crisis, the chairman of one health board has admitted, calling the current situation “dire”.
Dyfed Edwards, chair of Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB), said the health body was letting people down and needed to find immediate solutions to ending long ambulance handovers, corridor care, clogged emergency departments and delays in discharging patients.
He made the comment as a report on Urgent Emergency Care in north Wales was presented to the health board.
The health board’s chief executive said the board’s must focus on improving patient flow: “We’ve not designed the service properly and we’re funding failure,” said Carol Shillabeer.
Mr Edwards said: “The reality is people are waiting in ambulances for extreme lengths of time [and] people are waiting in emergency departments for extreme lengths of time – which is causing harm. That should worry all of us.
“We can have the strategies and all the rest of it, but that’s the reality for people out here.
“We’ve got a clogging up of the system which we have to try to address somehow.”
Setting aside any longer-term strategies set out in the report, he said: “We can’t wait. The situation is too desperate. It’s dire.
“We’re failing pretty miserably on government targets – but the most important thing is, we’re failing our citizens.
“It’s not a good place to be for our staff, but for the people we serve there is a huge risk.
He said the board needed to tackle the situation head-on with positive action – “not just strategy, not just policy but actually something that is going to make a real difference”.
“We are in a crisis situation.”
‘Terrible experience’
“This isn’t about money,” acknowledged Mrs Shillabeer citing “an additional £10m” which has gone into the area.
“We have all got personal stories of family, friends, people in our communities and colleagues that have had a terrible experience
“Other health boards are making significant progress by doing one simple thing – focusing on flow. Half of our emergency departments are occupied by people waiting for a bed.”
“Who wants to be a ‘corridor care nurse’?” she added, noting BCUHB is “the worst performing” health board for its management of Emergency Department ambulances.
“There is a government requirement for ambulance handovers to take no more than 45 minutes from October,” said Mrs Shillabeer.
“That is a requirement that will be tracked and very visible.”
Mr Edwards demanded “a short-term plan” to halve the number of patients in north Wales hospitals who are waiting to be signed off and go home.
“We’ve got 300 patients across our hospitals waiting to go home and that number is constant across North Wales.”
“The question is what’s going to be different? How will we reduce that 300 to 150?” he asked.
The health board said it would liaise with local councils to see how the authorities plan to spend their share of £30m of additional finding for social care – a key factor in enabling patient discharge.
In the longer-term, the goal was to create a single operating model for emergency departments across the region, explained Tehmeena Ajmal, interim chief operating officer
“We still operate around a three-site model with each doing things differently,” she said.
“The big prize for Betsi will be pushing to have a single model.”
