Cornwall hospital boss says ambulance wait times are improving
Adding a word of caution, Chief Operating Officer Robin Jones says they're "not out of the woods yet"
Hospital bosses say they have seen “significant” improvements in recent weeks in ambulance delays and the number of people still in hospital, despite finishing treatment.
There have been reports of dozens of ambulances queued up outside Royal Cornwall Hospital Treliske and hundreds of people stuck in beds as there has not been care available for them outside hospital.
However, Cornwall Council’s health and adult social care overview and scrutiny committee heard today that there had been big improvements in recent weeks. However, RCHT bosses were not confident enough to say that a solution to the problems had been found.
RCHT chief operating officer Robin Jones said: “The position we find ourselves has changed significantly and positively. There is a step change in where we find ourselves as an organisation.
“In the last four weeks we have had a reduction in the number of ambulances waiting outside the hospital.”
Mr Jones said that Royal Cornwall Hospital was in the middle of a “rest week” which started on Monday with the aim of improving the flow through the hospital and to further reduce ambulance delays. He said that the hospital was working alongside colleagues at Cornwall Council and Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to ease the issues which have been causing problems.
He said that there had been an improvement in delays in getting patients discharged from the hospital once they had completed their treatment. “There has been improvement in how long patients are staying in hospital waiting for their packages of care. The length of time patients are in our beds is reducing.”
However, with a word of caution he added: “We are not out of the woods yet, our numbers are still high.”
Mr Jones did say that there had been a “material reduction” in ambulance delays and said that since Friday it had been “very rare to have an ambulance held at the front of the hospital”. He added: “I wouldn’t want to go as far as saying we have solved the problem.”
The positive viewpoint was provided in addition to a report from Mr Jones to the scrutiny committee which explained some of the actions which have been taken to help. Some were implemented last month in addition to other measures previously announced.
These included adding second “boarding” space on the majority of wards which are boarding – increasing capacity by an extra 13 beds. The hospital also opened a same day emergency care facility for rapid assessment of frail elderly patients which releases emergency department capacity.
And the hospital opened 18 more inpatient eldercare beds on one of the wards. All the different actions taken had increased capacity at RCH by 83 beds.
In response to a question about winter pressures Mr Jones said that forecasts suggested that the timing of that added pressure was unlikely to change but the quantity was expected to increase. The scrutiny committee commended Mr Jones and the team at RCH for their work in tackling the issues.