Cllr John Pugh, the Liberal Democrat leader in Sefton and member of Sefton’s Health Scrutiny Committee, believes that local NHS A&E staff deserve recognition and reward for maintaining a good standard of care despite the extraordinary circumstances they face.
The latest statistics reveal that all local hospital trusts, including Southport, St Helens, and Liverpool University, are surpassing the national average for ambulance handovers, with Southport leading the way and all trusts showing improvement.
“This is no comfort to those waiting more than 30 minutes to be handed over from ambulance the service and is less than ideal but if you take into account the unprecedented demand on A&E, it’s clear local hospital trusts are putting in some shift.”
However, Cllr Pugh believes performance could improve better if more hospital trusts follow the example of Northumbria Trust-the best A&E performer in the country- and run their own community nursing services, supervising discharge into the community. This allows patients to be more speedily moved from A&E to wards.
“The irony is that this was exactly what Southport Hospital was endeavouring to do over 5 years until they were stopped by the commissioning body run by GPs – Southport and Formby CCG. I protested back then, and since then we have seen the weakening GP system and bed shortages becoming bigger issues.”
“Hopefully, some lessons have been learned.”
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