St George’s Hospital in Tooting says it is “not always able to provide the level of care it would like” due to bed shortages and staff strains, and apologises. The trust’s spokesperson confirmed that a critical situation has been declared due to the emergency department being overcrowded. “Our emergency departments (EDs) and hospitals are under extreme pressure right now – and we expect them to continue to be very busy over the coming months,” St Georges NHS Trust said in a statement. “We absolutely don’t want our patients to be waiting for long periods of time and our teams are working hard to ensure people coming to ED are seen as quickly as possible. “But right now – like all parts of the NHS – we are not always able to provide the level of care we would like, and we are very sorry this is the case. “There are things we are doing to try to ease pressures – such as deploying trained staff from non-patient facing roles, supporting elderly and frail people in their homes to avoid ED admissions, introducing a “hospital at home” and remote monitoring service, opening additional beds up on wards, and freeing up beds by working to discharge people as soon as they are medically fit. We are also prioritising patients who are most in need of clinical care, which means the sickest or most seriously injured patients will be seen first.” What I’m seeing, and what my colleagues are echoing across the country, is that they feel, unfortunately, that this is the worst they have ever seen the NHS for patients and staff,” the Labour MP for Tooting told Sky News yesterday. “We are now at the point where staff believe they are unable to provide safe and dignified care, and we now know that up to 500 people per week will die as a result of a lack of emergency care.” “We have had 12 years of political choices that have resulted in us already having an under-resourced NHS with no slack in the system,” she said. “Now we have a situation where people are having intimate examinations in cupboards, patients are waiting up to 99 hours in an ambulance in an A&E bay, unable to get a bed inside a hospital. We have children sleeping on plastic chairs, patients lying on the floors, and nurses holding up sheets on the floors.
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