SENIOR clinicians have created a unique command centre to help the area’s hospital operate under the worst winter pressures it has ever faced.


Winter pressures: Staff at Furness General Hospital  Medics now gather within Furness General Hospital’s major incident room at least four times a day to assess how full the hospital has become and whether there are any available beds across the whole trust.

The innovative move has been made in response to the busiest winter seen yet by the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust.

Free beds for people who need admitting to hospital have become so scarce that capacity across UHMBT, which includes the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and Westmorland General, in Kendal, is currently counted in minus figures.

And elective and non-urgent surgeries are having to be postponed to allow wards to be used for medical patients while the beds crisis is in full swing.

Dr Paul Grout, clinical director of acute medicine at Barrow’s hospital, described the pressure on FGH this year as “significant”.

“We have 45 patients who are medically fit for discharge,” he said. “The pressures on the hospital this year are significant to the point of having a serious impact on the number of elective and non-emergency surgeries we are able to carry out because we are having to use those surgical and day wards for medical patients.”

FGH has faced an increase of 11 per cent on the numbers of people attending A&E over the past 12 weeks compared to the same period last year – while ambulance arrivals have rocketed by 14 per cent.

Now, continual monitoring of the situation within the new command centre by FGH’s dedicated teams of doctors and nurses is helping to ensure its doors stay open to all who need hospital care.

Senior nurses and doctors take part in the command centre conferences to assess the numbers of inpatients at three hourly intervals throughout the day and through the night if necessary.

On Thursday, there were no free intensive care beds at either FGH or RLI while all other wards were also under pressure.

UHMBT received £1.2m of winter resilience cash from the government this year to help it prepare for additional patients – just a third of the £3.8m it was awarded for 2014/15.

Dr Grout explained the whole system was under pressure from the volumes of people requiring care – from A&E to social care services.

“These are of course short-term reactive measures,” he added.

“The solution to the problem is not easy, and the key to solving it requires a health system approach in which all the various providers of health and care work closer together, making investment decisions jointly that will connect services better for the benefit of patients.

“Longer term, health providers all need to work together to make sure we intervene at an earlier stage with patients – to give them the help they need to prevent crisis episodes which require them to come to hospital.”