Latest Accident and Emergency analysis.

I’ve edited this Guardian article, based on Accident and Emergency statistics published yesterday. It’s almost word for word what the BBC said today, so someone’s been copying a press release.

In fact if you’ve been following this Blog or my other one, you’ll have been reading me making provocative statements – all of which are borne out by these statistics.

1) While the number of elderly people attending A and E is rising it isn’t rising more than the proportion of elderly people in the population.

2) 53% of people attending A and E need treatment and it’s usually urgent. Only 47% don’t. How do they know they don't need treatment until they receive that advice?

3) Closing the NHS Direct helpline is probably responsible for the increase in those attendances.

4) The increase in attendances is not at A and E but in the walk-in centres and minor injury units that are there to take pressure off A and E. I have often complained that their stats should be excluded – they only inflate the figures. A and E attendances have barely risen.

5) The long waits are caused by too many beds and wards having closed –there aren’t enough to admit those patients who need admitting to hospital.

Of course it's so much easier to blame the patients....

Haroon Siddique         

The Guardian, Tuesday 3 December 2013

 

 

Attendances at A&E departments in England have risen significantly in recent years, with more than 600,000 more people using their services last winter than under the previous government, official NHS statistics have revealed. The figures show comprehensively for the first time the rise in numbers presided over by the coalition government, as fears mount of an impending "winter crisis", and prompted charities to warn that the situation could get worse.

 

Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said: "The numbers could continue to increase since the social care system is being stripped to the bone, with access to high-quality social care becoming ever more difficult as vital services are withdrawn or reduced as a result of the current crisis in care. The NHS will struggle to cope with the increasing pressures brought on by lack of social care provision unless the system is radically reformed and given adequate funding."

 

The figures, published on Tuesday by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), show that the most deprived 10% of society are twice as likely to go to A&E as those in the least deprived 10%. They also reveal that the proportion of old people attending major A&E units has risen from 19% to 21% over the past four years, with nearly half of them being admitted to hospital, a situation Jane Harris, policy director at disability charity Leonard Cheshire, claimed was avoidable. She said the government "should be investing in a better care system. Disabled and older people and families shouldn't feel they have to go to A&E unless it really is an emergency".

 

Attendances at A&E departments were up 11%, to 21.7 million, over the past four years, compared with a 3.2% growth in the population during the same period, mainly due to a rise at minor injury units, the statistics showed. Almost half (47.2%) of people who attended A&E received only guidance or advice or no treatment, which will add to concerns that A&E services are seeing patients who could be treated more efficiently elsewhere.

 

Measures taken by Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, to alleviate pressure on A&E include a named GP for elderly patients in their local surgery and making surgeries open for longer hours, although the HSCIC statistics show that attendances overnight are a small proportion of the total.

 

Dr Mark Porter, chair of the council of the British Medical Association, said patients needed to know how and where to access appropriate care. "Key to this is having an effective out-of-hours telephone service, yet the disastrous introduction of NHS111 replaced a clinician-led service with a call centre and was responsible for many people being wrongly directed to emergency departments," he said.

Last winter, 10.6 million people attended A&E, compared with 10 million in 2009-10. The number of people visiting A&E has been above 5 million in every quarter since the coalition government came to power, compared with exceeding 5 million in only three quarters (from April to December 2009) between April 2004 and March 2010. In the last full quarter (January to March 2010) of the previous government, attendances stood at 4.9 million, compared with 5.3 million in the same period this year.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)