Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said that he was ‘distressed and ashamed’ at the critical incidents declared across NHS trusts amid the winter flu crisis.
Emergency departments are facing high attendance levels, with a patient at a hospital forced to wait for 50 hours to be admitted.
Speaking on LBC Radio, Streeting said that even though there are ‘between three and four times as many hospital beds taken up with flu cases this year,’ it should lead to an ‘annual winter crisis’.
He said that in A&E departments, ‘there were lots of frail elderly people, including people with dementia, who were very confused, very distressed, crying out, not so much in pain as much as confusion.’ Corridor care was a common feature too and the hospital told Streeting that he was here on a ‘fairly good day’.
‘And as I walked around these conditions, I was looking around thinking: “This is a good day?”’
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Critical incidents were declared in Birmingham, East Midlands, Cornwall, Hampshire and Northamptonshire. The East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust declared the first critical incident in its history because of ‘significant patient demand, pressure within local hospitals and flooding’. University Hospitals Birmingham also declared a critical incident reporting an ‘exceptional number’ of patients with flu requiring admission.
Critical incidents can be declared when health and care services are so busy that special measures are required to restore normal operations and ensure patient safety. These can last for a few hours or extend to several days, allowing hospitals to recall staff from leave, stop non-urgent services and share resources with nearby hospitals.
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said that the flu season is normal but the ‘emergency care system is so overwhelmed and ‘creating severe operational difficulties’.
‘It is a significant flu outbreak, but the problem is there’s just no capacity to deal with it. So it is really a straw that is breaking the camel’s back.’
Streeting has pledged to do ‘everything I can to make sure that year-on-year, we see consistent improvement’ and said that the Government will publish an urgent reform ‘shortly’.