#emergency-departments

#emergency-departments

All of last year, and long before, we have demanded action to ensure our hospital system is ready for when demand for Emergency Departments would spike. This did not happen, we found ourselves in a particularly busy winter and now the wheels have come off. Demand spikes in the colder months; it always does. It cannot, should not, be the case that we have to pray for a quiet January for fear the system won't cope. We should simply plan for a normal one.

It concludes that there will be one additional death for every 69 patients who experience more than a four-hour wait in ED after the decision to admit has been made. This is consistent with previous studies. It's appalling in and of itself. Crucially, the study also demonstrated that for every four hours a person waited for a bed, their length of stay, once they got into that bed, increased by 8.6 hours.

Today's data, from NHSE's latest weekly winter situation report, covers the week ending 25 January. It showed that bed occupancy in English hospitals remains dangerously high, at 94.6%, while more than 14,000 people medically fit to be discharged from hospital were still stuck in beds. On a given day, there were on average 50,368 patients who had been in a hospital bed for seven days or longer, showing problems lie at the 'back door' of hospitals.

There were 286 patients on trolleys in emergency departments yesterday

Hospitals in England are using articificial intelligence to help cut waiting times in emergency departments this winter. The prediction algorithm is trained on historical data including weather trends, school holidays, and rates of flu and Covidto determine how many people are likely to visit A&E. The government said the technology allowed healthcare staff to do the things that they're trained to do, rather than having to be bound down by bureaucratic processes.

Sunday officially marked the start of winter yet our hospitals have been in the thick of it for months. Flu, other respiratory illnesses, and bugs including norovirus are spreading through our communities and placing a real strain on our services and the best present you can give us this year is taking steps to avoid these and a visit to hospital. A huge thank-you to all of our teams who are working in such challenging circumstances at this time of year to provide compassionate care for our patients.