Medway Maritime Hospital: Ambulances 'waited eight hours'

Patients arriving at a hospital by ambulance amid rising Covid rates waited eight hours before being admitted, a hospital trust was told.

Medway Maritime Hospital had an unannounced inspection by the Care Quality Commission on December 14.

Inspectors were left with concerns about ambulance handover delays. 

The hospital said delays for patients arriving at A&E had improved since health inspectors issued a warning notice.

James Devine, chief executive of Medway NHS Foundation Trust, said significant efforts had been made to drive down the length of time it takes for patients to be admitted since the CQC's visit, the Local Democracy Reporting Service has reported.

He told a meeting of Medway NHS Foundation Trust's board the hospital had seen "significant delays" in December, "sometimes averaging up to four or five hundred minutes in ambulance handover delays," but this was "not in all cases".

Mr Devine said the average waiting time for ambulance conveyance had been reduced to 134 minutes by 17 January and had since been cut down further to about 40 minutes. 

"We have not seen any change in ambulance presentations so this is genuinely as a result of changes to some of our practices and processes over the past six weeks," Mr Devine said.

Catherine Campbell, CQC's head of hospital inspection for the south-east, said: "We recognise the tremendous pressures that hospitals are facing but where we have significant concerns about safety we have a responsibility to follow these up.

"We continue to support services in their efforts to provide the best possible care in these challenging times while monitoring any risk closely."

The CQC says it is due to publish its latest report on the Medway Maritime Hospital "in the coming weeks".

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