'Patients dying needlessly while health board and government bury heads in the sand'

PATIENTS are “dying needlessly” as a result of “completely overwhelmed” emergency departments in north Wales, a group of retired doctors and nurses claim.

- RICHARD EVANS

They have launched a petition to “bring back community [hospital] beds and end tragedies in A&E corridors”.

They also want to “decrease patient mortality by reducing ambulance and corridor waits” and station “senior medics at the front door” at the region’s three major hospitals at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor and Wrexham Maelor.

The group's spokesman is retired consultant Jonathan Osborne FRCS, a former ENT (ear, nose and throat) surgeon at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd.

According to Mr Osborne, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB) remained in special measures partly due to a lack of community beds.

He said: “Patients are dying needlessly whilst the health board and Welsh Government make things worse as they bury their heads in the sand. Completely overwhelmed A&E departments run by harassed staff, packed waiting rooms of sick patients parked on trolleys in the corridors, unable to go up to the wards for want of a bed. The situation is so commonplace that we are no longer shocked and often accept that this is the new norm.”

But he described the situation as “far from normal” and unacceptable.

He added: “BCUHB has the worst figures for corridor waits in A&E in Wales, so bad that in January the Royal College of Nursing produced a report ‘Ending Corridor Care in Wales’.

“This states that waiting more than 24 hours should be a ‘never event’.

“In north Wales, 46% of patients who need admission wait for more than 24 hours. These seriously ill patients are kept in corridors with no dignity or privacy, often with no access to toilets.

“It established that long waits in A&E significantly increase the risk of dying. The clock starts ticking after a wait of as little as four hours.”

He went on to say that north Wales coroners had “expressed serious concern” that BCUHB had the “highest rate of preventable deaths” of any organisation in Wales.