Derby and Burton’s hospital chief says it is under an “unprecedented level of demand unlike those we have seen before”, as the fifth anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic approaches. This includes 12,000 more patients visiting A&E in a month than the year before and two-and-a-half wards worth of patients in hospital with respiratory illnesses including flu, Covid-19 and RSV.
Stephen Posey, chief executive of the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust, wrote in a report this week about the current pressure facing the organisation. This comes after days and days of the organisation declaring the highest level of alert – OPEL 4 – over the risk to services and patient safety.
He wrote: “In the festive season, the NHS can feel like it is at a different end of the spectrum to the rest of the country. While friends and family may have been starting to wind down in December, in the NHS our teams were gearing up.
“As we now find ourselves in a new year, we unfortunately also find ourselves under significant pressure as a provider offering urgent and emergency care services. The NHS is dealing with unprecedented levels of demand unlike those we have seen before, which our dedicated staff are working tirelessly to manage and to keep patients safe.
“Just here at UHDB, in November the demand for urgent and emergency care was up more than five per cent year-to-date, equating to more than 12,400 more patients than last year. Members of the public may have seen warnings from Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s National Medical Director, at the start of January that this winter’s flu season is “on track to be one of the worst we have ever seen”.
“The ‘quad-demic’ of winter viruses (flu, Covid, norovirus and respiratory syncytial virus, or ‘RSV’) is certainly compounding the pressures for our staff. In November, we introduced point-of-care testing in admission areas for RSV and influenza (flu), in addition to the testing already in place for Covid.
“We saw more than 70 people with respiratory illnesses in our hospital beds at the start of December alone, which equates to around two and half wards’ worth of patients.”
Mr Posey continued: “While our staff are working relentlessly in this environment to keep patients safe and provide the care they need, it is a reality that patient experience can be impacted in these times of significant pressure; some patients are waiting for long periods in A&E or for a bed in our hospitals, or being cared for in additional spaces only used in times of pressure.
“Our ambulance handover times have also been impacted, something that we are resolutely determined to resolve again with our capable ambulance service teams. As a whole NHS we prepare well, and well in advance, for winter, but it has remained exceptionally difficult on the ground – on behalf of the board I want to formally thank our teams for their exceptional and unwavering efforts.”
The trust says that over the past year 68 per cent of patients have been seen in A&E within four hours, partly due to a high increase in patients visiting the emergency department along with discharge delays, with the number of patients waiting more than 12 hours for admission increasing 53 per cent from the previous year. Last week, Joined Up Care Derbyshire data showed that on January 7 58 patients had been held in ambulances outside Royal Derby Hospital due to handover delays.
It showed that on January 7 there were 41 ambulances which waited more than an hour outside Royal Derby and that 53 patients across the trust had waited more than 12 hours to be admitted and that 202 patients had waited more than four hours.
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