13.09.12
On the edge
A new report suggests that hospitals are ‘on the edge’, with services overcrowded, negative attitudes and a lack of access to quality treatment out of normal working day hours.
There is a growing awareness that services must be redesigned, and this does not just include the actual buildings in which care is delivered. Effective leadership must be in place to ensure hospitals can move towards a system which can meet the demands of a growing population.
This is especially important for older patients, who are currently shifted around hospitals, with little regard to their dignity, safety or the continuity of their care.
Although such warnings may be coming thick and fast recently, the new RCP report is one that should make the NHS stop and think carefully about the service they provide, and how that can be improved, fast.
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