Warning about extreme pressure facing Ayrshire's main hospitals
Ayr and Crosshouse are both operating at well over 100% of their capacity
Last updated 15th Mar 2023
There is a warning from NHS Ayrshire & Arran about the extreme pressure currently being experienced by acute care services at Crosshouse and Ayr Hospitals.
The health board says both hospitals are currently operating at well over capacity, and that the pressure on the system is having a knock-on impact on A&E, with ambulances queueing outside emergency departments.
Hospital capacity well over 100%
Claire Burden, Chef Executive, explains: “Over the last 15 days, our hospital occupancy has increased with occupancy exceeding 100%.
“As a result, our already crowded Emergency Departments have become even busier with patients waiting for admissions into the hospital. Additionally, the waiting times to access our emergency departments are long, with some patients arriving by ambulance waiting outside the hospital when their conditions are not critical.
“This increase in congestion has been created through the steady need for new emergency admissions against a backdrop of a reduced daily discharge rate. Our Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) are working to reduce our delayed transfers of care, which accounts for around 12 per cent of all inpatients at this time.
There are currently over 100 more patients than the system is designed to cope with
"While more than 150 new patients are in the emergency department and the assessment unit, all needing to be assessed for their onward care plans. We also have 348 patients whose length of stay is now more than 14 days. This is at least 100 patients more than our system is able to cope with. Therefore, we are focusing our efforts on those new patients starting their acute pathway, making sure specialty patients get into the hospital as they need, along with the review of patients whose length of stay is more than 14 days.”
Medical, nursing, and Allied Health Professions staff from across the health board’s hospital sites are have been working to alleviate the pressure on the emergency departments, Combined Assessment Units and wards at Crosshouse and Ayr.
Focus on keeping hospitals safer for patients and staff
Claire Burden adds: “Our focus is to create a safer hospital for all patients and all staff. We want to ease the internal pressure for new admissions, so that anyone arriving at our Emergency Departments and Combined Assessment Units can be seen without delay.
“I appreciate at this time that our ambitions to close the historical COVID-19 beds, as well as unfunded beds, in our system, will come under greater pressure. However, I would like to reassure our staff and patients that there is no planned or forecast reduction in our core hospital bed base at University Hospitals Ayr or Crosshouse. We need both hospitals and our core funded bed base to deliver the care and services our population need.
“We are incredibly grateful for the dedication and professionalism offered every day by every staff member, and I would like to thank the many staff who have already re-arranged or may need to re-arrange the way they work to support other parts of our system. This helps us to reduce as many workforce gaps as possible to ensure patient safety.
“We remain determined to help make a difference in reducing long-standing pressure points in our system.”