Summer is here, but the NHS is gearing up for winter

Posted 25/08/2016 By: Amanda Cavanagh

The past two winters have been the worst for more than a decade with hospitals creaking under the strain. The four-hour waiting time target in A&E has been missed and record delays have been experienced in discharging patients. In some ways, the health service was lucky as flu levels remained low. If they hadn’t, the problems would have been much, much worse.

The prospect of a full-blown winter crisis this year is causing concern and more attention than ever is being put into plans to ensure that there are the resources in place to help the health services to cope.

Speedy discharge

Plans for this year have been submitted by bosses at NHS England and the Department of Health to the House of Commons Health Committee as part of its inquiry into winter pressures. These include a range of new measures, including extending the flu vaccination campaign to school Year 3, better communication about what services are available as alternatives to A&E, increasing the number of clinical staff in the 111 urgent phone service and streaming patients at the front door of A&E by increasing the presence of GPs.

These measures will start being rolled out from October, while hospitals and the wider emergency care service have also been given the green light to take a series of other steps if they are under particular pressure.

Routine operations can be cancelled to release resources, but this year ambulance services are being given more freedom to delay sending crews out and hospitals are being encouraged to send nursing teams into people’s homes to allow them to be discharged more speedily. Meanwhile, a specialist support team has been set up to help advise A&E units about other smaller scale measures they can take and, as has happened previously, a national crisis team is being established to step in if pressures grow so great they require national co-ordination.

Amanda Cavanagh, a member of the specialist medical injury team at Ashtons Legal, comments:

“My deep concern is that yet again the government is spending more money on “advisory” measures, instead of putting the money where it is needed most and addressing the critical issue of staff shortages. We already see many clinical negligence claims arise due to delays in ambulance attendances or because of a lack of staffing in hospitals. I cannot see that these measures are going to help to minimise this basic issue.”