Why the NHS is performing miracles
Hoorah for this article which tells us:
In recent weeks, bed occupancy rates have hit 95%. Now that may not sound like the definition of being full, but it is well above the 85% recommended threshold for a hospital to work effectively.
Above this level hospitals start to unravel, patients end up in the wrong places, infection rates start to rise and a backlog of patients builds up in corridors, in A&E and outside in ambulances dropping patients off.
Yes, some of this has started happening, but in many respects you would have expected performance to deteriorate even more than it has.
During the first week of the year – the most difficult so far this winter – more than three-quarters of patients arriving in A&E were still seen in four hours.
Yes the rate of-called “trolley waits” – where patients admitted as an emergency are left waiting more than four hours for a bed – doubled to one in five patients. But the number of “dire” 12-hour waits only amounted to 0.5%.
A week later bed occupancy rates had risen slightly – and guess what happened? Performance actually improved on many measures.
Ask anybody working in the health service and they will say this is down to the dedication and hard work of hospital staff.
Lord Kerslake, chairman of King’s College Hospital in London and a former senior civil servant, has described the efforts of staff at his hospital as “extraordinary”, while the BBC coverage over the past week or so has been full of doctors, nurses and managers recounting how everyone is pulling together.
I think this huge challenge puts all sorts of innovative opportunities our way in rural settings. This is why we have organized our rural conference for 28 February 2017. To learn more about the art of the “rural possible” in terms of health book here: