12:40pm Wednesday 17th March 2010
By James Connell
NHS bosses have blamed the snow for the “disappointing” performance of the health service in Worcestershire this winter.
Health leaders came under fire from the health overview and scrutiny committee over their handling of winter pressures on the NHS.
Leaders from Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust which runs Worcestershire Royal Hospital; the West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust; NHS Worcestershire, which manages community hospitals; the Worcestershire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust and adult social care faced questions from the watchdog.
Concerns were raised about the response of ambulance crews to 999 calls, which has been worse in Worcestershire than the rest of the region.
Juliet Brunner, chairman of the committee, said: “The performance of the ambulance service was really disappointing.”
Ambulance crews are supposed to get to at least 75 per cent of the most serious and life-threatening emergency calls such as cardiac arrests, strokes and car accidents within eight minutes of the call.
They have failed to hit the 75 per cent in Worcestershire in December (70.9 per cent) and January (72.6 per cent), below the overall West Midlands figure which was 71.5 per cent in December and 75.2 per cent in January.
Health bosses from all 17 primary care trusts in the West Midlands pumped £11 million in extra cash into the ambulance service in September so they could hit this target.
However, Mark Gough, regional head of the ambulance service, said they were dealing with between a 14 and a 17 per cent rise in the volume of calls over winter.
Sandra Rote, director of clinical development and lead executive nurse, said NHS Worcestershire had invested more than £500,000 in providing extra beds over winter.
Overall, NHS Worcestershire allocated £1 million extra to cope with the combination of winter pressures on the health service and the swine flu pandemic.
NHS Worcestershire invested in 23 extra beds on top of the usual 229 beds across Worcestershire’s community hospitals – 11 extra beds in Evesham, 10 in Bromsgrove and one each in Malvern and Tenbury.
Mrs Rote said: “We just had to do what needed to be done and bear the consequences later. We will not know until the end of the financial year how much we have overspent.
“Every winter is a challenge for us. This is why we tried to be far more proactive than we have been in previous years. We thought we had got all the planning right. We weren’t expecting so many snow falls over such a sustained period of time.”
Committee member Coun June Griffiths said: “They seemed as though they were shocked by the fact that we had snow in winter. That does concern me.”
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