NHS Meltdown: Patients Left in Ambulances for Hours

Can you imagine? Say, you are hit by a car and are rushed to the hospital by ambulance. It arrives at the entrance, and instead of being taken into the ER for immediate treatment—you are left waiting for hours so that the hospital can say you were treated within four hours of arriving at the hospital! From the story:

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.

Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge. The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls...

Labour brought in the four-hour A&E target to end the scandal of patients waiting for days in casualty or being kept on trolleys in corridors. But a shortage of out-of-hours GP care, after thousands of doctors opted out of treating patients outside working hours under lucrative new contracts, means more and more are going to casualty units, putting them under greater pressure.

Dr Jonathan Fielden of the British Medical Association said: “The vast majority of patients coming into hospital by ambulance are in critical need of care in hospital and therefore delay can worsen their outcome.”...Conservative health spokesman Mike Penning said: “Not admitting people to hospital but stacking patients in car parks beggars belief in the 21st century.”

This is a death spiral.