NHS Ayrshire & Arran has today admitted they are experiencing “high demand” for acute care services in both University Hospitals Ayr and Crosshouse.
Top brass have revealed that hospital occupancy has increased in the last fortnight by a staggering 100 per cent, and services are stretched and “congested".
Claire Burden, chief executive said: “Over the last 15 days, our hospital occupancy has increased with occupancy exceeding 100 per cent.
“As a result, our already crowded Emergency Departments have become even busier with patients waiting for admissions into the hospital.
“Additionally, the waiting times to access our emergency departments are long, with some patients arriving by ambulance waiting outside the hospital when their conditions are not critical.
“This increase in congestion has been created through the steady need for new emergency admissions against a backdrop of a reduced daily discharge rate.”
Ms Burden also told how their Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) are “working to reduce” delayed transfers of care, which accounts for “around 12 per cent” of all inpatients at this time.
She continued: “While more than 150 new patients are in the emergency department and the assessment unit, all needing to be assessed for their onward care plans, we also have 348 patients whose length of stay is now more than 14 days.
“This is at least 100 patients more than our system is able to cope with.
“Therefore, we are focusing our efforts on those new patients starting their acute pathway, making sure specialty patients get into the hospital as they need, along with the review of patients whose length of stay is more than 14 days.”
Ms Burden also revealed that, in response to these pressures, medical, nursing and Allied Health Professions (AHP) staff from across their hospital sites are working “extremely hard” to support the daily decongestion of Emergency Departments, Combined Assessment Units and wards.
Claire Burden said: “Our focus is to create a safer hospital for all patients and all staff.
“We want to ease the internal pressure for new admissions, so that anyone arriving at our Emergency Departments and Combined Assessment Units can be seen without delay.”
Today’s announcement comes in the wake of recent reports that as many as 24 beds from Station 10 at Ayr Hospital were facing the axe- because the health authority is keen to restore ‘pre-covid’ capacity at the site.
And there’s also been dismay with the proposals to transfer three Level 3 Intensive Care Unit beds from Ayr to Crosshouse.
Ms Burden said: “I appreciate at this time that our ambitions to close the historical Covid-19 beds, as well as unfunded beds, in our system, will come under greater pressure.
“However, I would like to reassure our staff and patients that there is no planned or forecast reduction in our core hospital bed base at University Hospitals Ayr or Crosshouse.
“We need both hospitals and our core funded bed base to deliver the care and services our population need.
“We are incredibly grateful for the dedication and professionalism offered every day by every staff member, and I would like to thank the many staff who have already re-arranged or may need to re-arrange the way they work to support other parts of our system. This helps us to reduce as many workforce gaps as possible to ensure patient safety.”
She added: “We remain determined to help make a difference in reducing long-standing pressure points in our system.”
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