Critical incident declared by Derbyshire Health Services
I's due to mounting pressure on services in the county.
A “critical incident” has been declared by Derbyshire’s health and care services due to mounting pressure caused by the heatwave, Covid-19 and pandemic backlog.
A meeting today of the NHS Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board (which oversees health and care services in the county and city) was told that the “critical incident” had be called as a last resort due to unprecedented pressure on services.
Tracy Allen, the chief executive of Derbyshire Community Health Services, told the July 21 meeting that ambulances were stacking up outside hospital A&Es with patients waiting inside due to intense demand in the emergency departments themselves.
She shared evidence that the impact of pressure caused by heatwaves – resulting in an increase in respiratory illness – typically lags by a couple of days, saying intense pressure is now expected over the next five to six days.
The resulting critical incident declaration, backed by NHS England, has seen the Derbyshire healthcare system agree to buy care home beds from private providers in a bid to “decompress” acute hospitals – Royal Derby and Chesterfield Royal.
A frequent and ongoing pressure at our healthcare organisations has been caused by “bed blocking” with scores of patients medically fit for discharge remaining in hospital beds because there is not an available care home spot for them – or support packages to look after them in their own home.
This month the Derby and Burton hospital trust said it has had 120 patients medically fit for discharge – four wards worth – which is double the usual amount (pre-pandemic) of 60 patients.
Top level severe incidents have been declared numerous times over the course of the pandemic but they are typically only seen during the intense pressure of winter.
Ms Allen said:
“Yesterday (July 20) we found ourselves in a really critical situation in terms of that pressure right through the system and, most visibly, those risks were presenting outside of the acute hospital emergency departments in terms of the amount of calls that East Midlands Ambulance Service were stacking up and the amount of ambulances and patients waiting outside of emergency departments, the pressures on emergency departments and then the pressures right through the acute trusts in terms of the number of people they were caring for as inpatients.
“We all recognised and agreed that the pressures were such that we were dealing with really critical patient safety issues.”
She said triggering a critical incident has lead to measures aimed at increasing clinical capacity to manage patients as well as proactive responses such as raising public awareness about the ongoing issues – and what they can do to help healthcare providers.
This includes only attending A&E if you have a serious or life-threatening ailment and have already contacted other services such as urgent treatment centres, GPs, pharmacies and the NHS 111 service.
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