Here’s one trend that’s going the opposite from the US that’s actually good news for the Brits. A new private Accident & Emergency unit is to be opened this October in Brentford, West London. To non-British readers, that’s a private Emergency Room.
This has been widely reported as the first attempt to set up ER in the UK wrongly as it turns out. I contacted the BBC and the wording has changed to it claims to be the first. Obviously emergency healthcare in Britain existed before the state nationalized hospitals in 1948.
This report from 1998 shows that at least one serious attempt has been made to charge people for access to emergency healthcare in Britain. It failed for two reasons: the location was not ideal. The middle of Hampstead Heath is not the most obvious demand area for ER services and the Manor House Hospital (owned by a trade union) was sold to property developers.
The other interesting point in the BBC report is the view of the British Medical Association, the monopolistic body that represents the producer interests of doctors in the UK.
A Department of Health survey published in July found 6% of hospital patients waited at least 12 hours in A&E on a trolley or a chair. The government wants 90% of A&E patients to be assessed, treated, discharged or admitted within four hours. But doctors attending the British Medical Association’s annual conference in June denounced the target and said it would damage patient care.
So let me see if I have this straight – doctors believe that reducing the amount of time patients lie on trolleys or blood-splattered chairs in the waiting-room (I’ve sat on some of them), from 12 hours to four hours, being denied treatment, will damage patient care.
Dr Shipman I presume?
The point is that if you have a target such as all patients must be seen in 4 hours & you have someone who’s been waiting with a minor cut for just under four hours and someone comes in who looks as if thjey’ve had a heart attack your meant to see the person with the minor cut.
Let the person in charge at that unit set the priorities for that unit. Not government fiat.
They should also make it clear that people with minor injuries should go to the minor injuries unit, not A&E. I know the RVI here in Newcastle has one, its usually empty so you can walk right in and get treated.
Following from what Raj said, the other thing that would be likely to be happened is that people would be bounced off the queue into some other department and abandoned. Broken leg? You’re bounced to X-ray, which doesn’t have a target, so be prepared to stay the night.
The only thing worse than a slow health service, is an overclocked slow health service.
I doubt the BMA is suggesting that shorter waits in casualty are harmful to patient care. That yet another DoH target may be harmful to patient care, on the other hand, is entirely plausible.
America has all kinds of stand alone emergency medicine clinics.
I live in a town of 160,000 and there are at least 2 that I know of.
Now they are not a replacement for a hospital ER, but they can handle sprains and small bone breaks at least.