There are fears of a new crisis at an NHS hospital after a report found patients are forced to wait for days to be seen and the care is so chaotic they are left in pain.
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| Patients are left in corridors for hours as A&E is full |
Patients at the hospital in Greater Manchester have to wait up to four days to see a consultant, or are left in corridors for hours as A&E is full, two reviews commissioned by the hospital found.
Junior doctors are also understood to have privately raised concerns about staffing levels.
Junior doctors are also understood to have privately raised concerns about staffing levels.
Long delays before being assessed are putting patients at risk, with some admitted on a Friday not being checked by a consultant until Tuesday, according to the reports by NHS review teams seen by the Guardian.
Tameside maintain on their website that the Care Quality Commission, the care regulator, gave them "clean bill of health" after an unannounced visit in February.
But the reviews of the hospital, which cares for 250,000 people in east Manchester and Derbyshire, were carried out at roughly the same time and uncovered a string of problems.
Patient admission into A&E is being delayed because the beds are frequently full, it was claimed in the report which is said to have made repeated references to shortages of doctors and nurses and a lack of consultants.
The hospital says it has drawn up an action plan to address the issues raised by the NHS experts.
However, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has criticised the hospital and the CCG over the reports.
"Substandard care in hospitals is completely unacceptable," Mr Hunt said. "Patients should not face excessive waits for treatment and junior doctors must have the support they need from consultants to provide patients with that treatment".
The Interim Management and Support (IMAS) team, which visited Tameside at its request in March, concluded that "delays in assessment, treatment and admission" from A&E are adversely affecting "patient outcomes" as well as their experience of the care.
They also noted a nurse was accepting the handover of patients from ambulance crews in corridor.
"Up to eight patients at a time had recently been managed in the corridor with delays of up to two hours. Nurses ... noted that one patient had waited up to seven hours in the corridor," the review found.
A separate report, by the North West Utilisation Management Unit (UM), also identified a number of problems.
Patients were not receiving painkillers promptly and some referred to the medical assessment and admission unit by their GPs for serious but not life-threatening issues were waiting several hours and sometimes overnight on chairs before being seen, the staff informed the review team.
Local GPs now want the long-serving chief executive of Tameside General Hospital, Christine Green, and the medical director, Tariq Mahmood, to stand down.
Tameside is one of 14 hospitals at which Sir Bruce Keogh was asked to investigate high death rates in the wake of the Francis report. His report is due in the next few weeks.
A spokesman for Tameside Hospital said: “The Trust takes the views and concerns of its staff very seriously, including those who work day-in, day out under enormous pressure on the frontline.
“That’s why we specifically commissioned the reviews concerned, precisely so we could understand more about our delivery on the frontline and how its quality can be maximised alongside support for our staff.
“As soon as the reports were received, we sought to substantiate any comments or observations contained in them, although some comments by individuals were not able to be substantiated.
“Within 4 weeks, we developed a specific Action Plan to address the concerns in the reviews. This was signed off by the Board over a month ago, a copy sent to Monitor and has been publicly available via our website since the beginning of June.”
They admitted that some of their staff – believed to be junior doctors raising staffing issues – discussed a number of concerns with the postgraduate medical dean for Greater Manchester, Jackie Hayde.
But the spokesman added that he was “surprised” that local GPs, who form the Tameside and Glossop clinical commissioning group (CCG), had expressed a lack of faith in the management as they had a good working relationship.
The hospital says it has drawn up an action plan to address the issues raised by the NHS experts.
However, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has criticised the hospital and the CCG over the reports.
"Substandard care in hospitals is completely unacceptable," Mr Hunt said. "Patients should not face excessive waits for treatment and junior doctors must have the support they need from consultants to provide patients with that treatment".
The Interim Management and Support (IMAS) team, which visited Tameside at its request in March, concluded that "delays in assessment, treatment and admission" from A&E are adversely affecting "patient outcomes" as well as their experience of the care.
They also noted a nurse was accepting the handover of patients from ambulance crews in corridor.
"Up to eight patients at a time had recently been managed in the corridor with delays of up to two hours. Nurses ... noted that one patient had waited up to seven hours in the corridor," the review found.
A separate report, by the North West Utilisation Management Unit (UM), also identified a number of problems.
Patients were not receiving painkillers promptly and some referred to the medical assessment and admission unit by their GPs for serious but not life-threatening issues were waiting several hours and sometimes overnight on chairs before being seen, the staff informed the review team.
Local GPs now want the long-serving chief executive of Tameside General Hospital, Christine Green, and the medical director, Tariq Mahmood, to stand down.
Tameside is one of 14 hospitals at which Sir Bruce Keogh was asked to investigate high death rates in the wake of the Francis report. His report is due in the next few weeks.
A spokesman for Tameside Hospital said: “The Trust takes the views and concerns of its staff very seriously, including those who work day-in, day out under enormous pressure on the frontline.
“That’s why we specifically commissioned the reviews concerned, precisely so we could understand more about our delivery on the frontline and how its quality can be maximised alongside support for our staff.
“As soon as the reports were received, we sought to substantiate any comments or observations contained in them, although some comments by individuals were not able to be substantiated.
“Within 4 weeks, we developed a specific Action Plan to address the concerns in the reviews. This was signed off by the Board over a month ago, a copy sent to Monitor and has been publicly available via our website since the beginning of June.”
They admitted that some of their staff – believed to be junior doctors raising staffing issues – discussed a number of concerns with the postgraduate medical dean for Greater Manchester, Jackie Hayde.
But the spokesman added that he was “surprised” that local GPs, who form the Tameside and Glossop clinical commissioning group (CCG), had expressed a lack of faith in the management as they had a good working relationship.
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