I am currently the City Councils Observer on the Royal Wolverhampton Trusts Board. I have no speaking or voting rights. The Chairman does however at the end of the Public Session ask we if I have a question. These reports I am publishing on my web site are in essence my observations from these Hospital Board meetings. The reports that the public read on here, are the same reports I submit to the City Council through the Leaders Office.
Integrated Quality & Performance Report – In my opinion there is a cause for concern in this report. On Quality the report picks out that hospital complaints had increased during May 2015 to 42 individual complaints in comparison against 36 received in the previous year. The overall Trust rate for May is 52% ; This is a deterioation of 8% on the previous month. The statistics are not good.
The Emergency Department continues to see increasing number of attendances. In May of this year it was 4.17% higher than the same period last year equating to an additional 433 attendances in a month. The Trust was predicting fines for this level of performance. So far June had seen an additional 107 attendances in the first 17 days of the month. Ambulance hand over saw a deterioration, a fine was also being anticipated for this level of service. Its clear that the hospital is facing unprecedented demands for its A&E services. The staff and the infrastructure are very much stretched.
Cancer– This is an area that I have concerns over as again the report is not good to read, the hospital is predicting possible failure of the 62 day screening and the 62 day referral to treatment target for May.
BED Pressure -70 Operations were cancelled in May. 65% of cancelled operations were due to bed pressure.My view on this is that the public will believe that performance in this hospital should be better than this. Cancellations of operations is an incredible strain on patients, and their family. There were other cancellations of operations other than beds. These were for lack of theatre time, and there were 12 cases in total for lack of theatre time. The statistics also show that – 6 operations were cancelled because there was more ‘urgent cases’.
The bulk of the departments cancellations for ‘no beds’ were in
- Cardiology -16
- Gynaecology -11
- Orthopaedics – 9
- Cardiac Surgery -3
- General Surgery – 2
- Ophthalmology -2
- Head & Neck – 1
- Urology – 1
Total 46 OPERATIONS LOST DUE TO THERE BEING NO BEDS.
Staff Sickness The Trust sickness absence decreased in May of this year to 4.29% from 4.41% however this is still above the current Trust target of 3.24% .This compares with a figure of 4.79% across the NHS as a whole.
My view on this is that the public will believe that performance in this hospital should be better than this.
Councillor Phil Bateman MBE FCILT
Wolverhampton City Council Observer.
