London’s NHS ‘better prepared’ for this winter after hospital expansions, says health official

In preparation for winter, the London Ambulance Service has an extra 50 ambulances, with 25 more in the pipeline
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Ross Lydall @RossLydall6 November 2018

The NHS in London is better prepared for winter but “there will still be ­challenges”, a health minister admitted today.

The A&E at St Thomas’ hospital in Lambeth has completed a £20 million rebuild, while the emergency department at Charing Cross hospital in ­Fulham is midway through a £7.2 ­million expansion.

London Ambulance Service (LAS) has an extra 50 ambulances, with 25 more in the pipeline, and hit all its 999 response times last month.

Health minister Steve Barclay, speaking to the Standard after visiting LAS, said London NHS trusts were further ahead than last year on their preparations with social care providers to get medically fit patients out of hospital as quickly as possible.

Work was also more advanced in terms of minimising patient “handover delays” from ambulance crews to A&E staff, and in reducing the number of “frequent callers” to LAS — people who called 999 but were not ill enough to merit an ambulance.

Last year’s winter was the worst to hit the NHS, with many London hospitals running out of beds daily and thousands of non-emergency operations cancelled. The first stage of the Charing Cross A&E expansion is expected be completed by January, replacing 12 cramped bays separated only by a curtain with 15 individual treatment rooms.

An increase in resuscitation bays, from five to eight, is due to be finished by June. The urgent care centre is also being expanded.

Doctors hope this will end the practice of patients being left on trolleys in ­corridors — and a long-running controversy about the A&E being at risk of closure.

Dr Ali Sanders, A&E director at Charing Cross, said: “Ten years ago we used to see 90 to 100 type-1 [priority] attendances a day. Now we will often see 130 to 150. A hundred is a really quiet day now. We have been so overcrowded. It will make a massive difference. It’s bringing it up to modern standards.”

Meanwhile, the expanded emergency department at St Thomas’ opened last week. It now treats about 420 patients a day.

Dr Katherine Henderson, head of A&E at Guy’s and St Thomas’, said the old department had been designed for a maximum of 300 patients a day and was treating some 380 a day when the rebuild started.

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