Full story in The Guardian, 18 November 2017
Health service chiefs have been declared “barking mad” for ordering hospitals to ensure no patient is treated in a corridor or languishes on a trolley for hours when this year’s winter crisis hits.
NHS England’s instructions, intended to avoid a repeat of hospitals’ descent into the sort of meltdown seen last year, also say that patients should not have to wait more than 15 minutes in the back of an ambulance outside an A&E unit as they wait to be handed over to hospital staff.
Critics have described the plans, outlined in a four-page letter sent to hospital chiefs as “la-la land”, “totally unrealistic” and an attempt “to create Narnia”. Hospital bosses say they regularly have to use all the three tactics which the NHS wants to ban in order to help them cope with the influx of patients created by winter weather and seasonal infections.