10.05.13
A&E demand ‘unsustainable’ – CQC chairman David Prior
Too many patients are arriving in hospital as emergencies, when they could have been helped earlier, CQC chairman David Prior has warned.
Health minister Anna Soubry admitted there was no quick solution to the “serious” problem. She told the BBC: “We have a serious problem, we've had a problem for a while. If you look at the number of people presenting at A&E it's grown by one million in just the last year.
“Unfortunately, unless we take urgent action, which is what we have been doing, it's a problem that will grow and it's very complicated and there is no quick and easy solution.”
The CQC has identified 45 hospitals with sustained problems over the past five years, which have been set as a priority for inspection. A further 20% of hospitals are “coasting along”, Prior stated.
Speaking to a conference held by health thinktank the King’s Fund, he called for large-scale closures of hospital beds and investment into community care.
Prior said: “If we don’t start closing acute beds, the system is going to fall over. Emergency admissions through Accident & Emergency (A&E) are out of control in large parts of the country … That is totally unsustainable.”
He added that GPs should be available to patients at all times: “I think primary care is in bad shape. I think GPs ought to be responsible 24/7 – they should never have opted out from out of hours care.”
Norman Lamb, care minister, said: “We have out-of-hours care that too often falls down. People end up with the default option of A&E because there is nothing else that they are confident in.
“We have institutionalised fragmentation of care over the years. Where does the poor patient fit into this, how do they make sense of it? We need a system that promotes integration not crushes it.”
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