Forum Topic

Ealing Hospital makes ITV News

The Urgent Care Centre at Ealing Hospital, doctors deliberately discharge patients before they are treated to avoid NHS waiting time penalties. http://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-07-21/medical-staff-under-pressure-tell-patient-to-take-her-own-temperature/

Fred Hunt ● 3906d30 Comments

Absolutely correct, Care UK is a private company, making large profits from what would seem to be poor medical care.If anyone would like to take action against Care UK, you can do so by visiting the 38Degrees website campaign here:https://speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/shut-the-door-on-care-ukShare on Facebook: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/kick-out-care-uk-facebookShare on Twitter: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/kick-out-care-uk-twitter

Jan Jones ● 3897d

No it was not out of hours. We attended a GP surgery as an emergency (unbooked but were fitted in) The Dr assessed the situation and sent us to A & E with his written notes. He had arranged this by telephone and we went immediately as instructed. We were then seen immediately. This was the shortest method to access the tests that clarified the position. For me this worked brilliantly.

Arthur Breens ● 3899d

Arthur - was this out of hours - whatever that might be?I think when we could contact our own GP out of hours we were more likely to.  When you haven't a clue who is going to turn up and when don't you have less confidence in a system?

Philippa Bond ● 3899d

Anna perhaps I need to clarify. GP did phone so no triage straight in like Prince Charles and with all past history under arm. Straight into battery of tests and given all clear by them and a booking with cardiology just to be certain. Wow and wow again. Hey and did you know Ealing is my nearest hospital easy to get to and easy to park and we thought this was an emergency.

Arthur Breens ● 3899d

Why did the GP send you to accident and emergency?  For all conditions requiring emergency attention your GP has access to telephone emergency referral services to an approriate department in the West London NHS Trust area. To give an example, your GP could pick up the phone and have an emergency referral for you in a matter of minutes to St Marys for an eye condition where you would be seen by a specialist in their emergency clinic within an hour or two. Your GP can do this though they then have to pay for the referral from their budget (as with any referral) and go through the hassle of organising it. Instead if they send you to accident and emergency it costs them nothing though you then have to go through hours of triage and waiting until you possibly end up with an emergency referral to a 24 hour facility at another location which may be the same one that your GP could have booked to into in the first place. Always try and get an emergency referral from your GP if they are adamant about sending you to accident and emergency first it is all to do with money. If you go to Ealing accident and emergency outside of working hours several of the specialist departments in Ealing Hospital do not operate outside of working hours so you will have to go to another site. If you want to see what your GP is like ask for an emergency referral, if they say no then find another GP.

Anna Leuven-Rice ● 3900d

Our GP sent us direct to A&E bypassing UCC and we were very impressed. Ealing's CCG must get a grip and sort the UCC out now. No weasel words...action. I would like to see a line or two from them here to say sorry and explain what they are doing. The Shaping a Healthier Future initiative was designed to bring health care into the community. So how about bringing communication/interaction into this community....or is that too much like climbing down the tree and eating humble pie?

Arthur Breens ● 3900d

If you are considered bad enough then the UCC will send you to A&E.

Philippa Bond ● 3900d

Alice, it's got nothing to do with Ealing Hospital, it just happens to be in the same building.It's a private company, Care UK.

Paul James ● 3900d

Ealing Urgent Care Centre is commissioned by NHS Ealing and run by Care UK, an independent company that provides services to NHS patients.  Paid for by the NHS

Fred Hunt ● 3900d

This documentary was about a private company, care uk. Nothing to do with the nhs or Ealing hospital.What is so hard to understand about this?

Paul James ● 3900d

I now understand the term - thank you for the explanation.  However, I would argue that a hospital cannot be described as a 'palace of culture' because it does, in fact, perform a useful and necessary function. I think what you have outlined so far only proves the need for properly 'joined up' services, rather than the splintering that is taking place at the moment by farming various functions out to external companies, which may be difficult to control and monitor.NHS West London believes that it is better to concentrate some services in specialist centres of expertise - for example, eye treatment.  I believe it is possible to have minor eye procedures carried out at Ealing, but it obviously would be prohibitively expensive to have an eye consultant available at all hours.  I sympathise with your experience when you were referred to Northwick Park, but did you expect to be taken there by ambulance?  This would not have been a proper use of an emergency ambulance, I'm afraid.  Did you ask for directions?  Or ask someone to call a cab to take you?  As to a 99.99% success rate, I'm afraid you'll have to look long and wide to find any organisation of any kind that achieves that.  All we can all do is our best - humans are fallible and there will always be mistakes and misjudgements.

Thelma Leach ● 3901d

Ms Leach,I am sorry I go carried away with the cultural references, a "palace of culture" was something that the Soviets used to build in towns throughout the Soviet Block during the time of the Soviet Union as "gifts" to their worthy compatriots in East European countries in the Soviet Block. Many a town was adorned with these 30-storey concrete tower (many looking not unlike Senate House in central London though much much larger). Many towns and cities in the Soviet Block had these "white elephants" built for them in their town centres to help foster communist and soviet culture. In Eastern Europe the term "palace of culture" was used in the same context or meaning as "white elephant" - they were of no use, no one wanted them, however, politics decreed that they should be given, received, and welcomed.Also, I did not mean to use the word: "polyglot" I meant to use the word "Polymath".I hope that explains what I was trying to say.

Alice E. Barter ● 3901d

No one should should have a bad experience at Ealing Hospital. The goods do not cancel out the bads. The bads lead to death. Nothing below 99.999% good is acceptable in a critical life environment like a hospital.

Alice E. Barter ● 3901d

But it is part of Ealing Hospital, it is part of the West Lonson Health trust that includes West Middlesex, St. Mary's, Northwick Park. If we start saying that it is not part of Ealing Hospital then should we start to say that the Moorfield's Eye Hostpital department in Ealing Hospital is not part of Ealing Hospital because it is a satellite unit of the Moorfields Eye Hospital elsewhere in London, or that the Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) department is not part of Ealing Hospital because it is a satellite of the ENT department of St Mary's Hospital and the Ealing ENT department goes home at five in the afternoon, as does the eye department. A friend of mine who went into Ealing Urgent Care with an eye problem was referred on: she was given a map and told to make her way to St Mary's under her own steam even though she could not see properly (Ealing Hospital eye department had gone home at five), and a I a little while back was offered an emergency referral to Northwick Park ENT at six o'clock in the evening by emergency care because the Ealing Hospital ENT department shut at five o'clock. I wasn't even offered a map, just told to go to Northwick Park under my own steam and in pain. No. We cannot separate urgent care from Ealing Hospital itself. The whole ediface is built on external units part-timing or contracting in from other hospitals. These excellent TV documentary makers have chronicled what happens in Urgent Care, and believe me, it is the tip of the iceberg as far as the rest of the hospital is concerned.

Alice E. Barter ● 3901d

OK - I now understand more of what you want.I assume you are aware that the Urgent Care Centre is run by a private company, Care UK?  I agree that there should be much closer monitoring of these facilities which appear to be NHS, but are not.  Care UK owes its position as provider of urgent (non-emergency)care to its appointment by the local Clinical Commissioning Group and I think it is they who should be answering the worrying questions posed in the documentary.I think you will find that Steve Pound, Rupa Huq and even Virendra Sharma have all argues against the parcelling out of NHS responsibilities to private companies such as Care UK.I don't understand what you mean by 'Palaces of Culture adorning the health landscape'.  I thought that Ealing Hospital was just what it says on the tin - a hospital.  Are you telling us that this is not so?  Or are you hinting that you are unhappy with the siting of the hospital and its catchment area?I know that many people have had bad experiences at Ealing Hospital - equally I'm sure there are many others who have had good ones.  I and my family have never had cause to complain about any treatment we have received there.We are relatively lucky in that, if the A&E at Ealing should close, we are near enough to West Middlesex in an emergency.  I pity those who will have to negotiate the journey to Northwick Park - a hospital which has had its own share of problems, including a forced temporary closure of its Maternity department.

Thelma Leach ● 3901d

Please can we seperate the two. The urgent care centre is nothing at all to do with Ealing hospital.

Paul James ● 3901d

Ms. Leach,Please excuse me for not answering your points however I am neither an arhtitect nor a health policy planner, nor a doctor, nor an NHS manager, I am merely reporting my own (and others experiences) in the hope that someone might hear. What has been worrying is the lack of response to this documentary by the likes of Sharma, Bell, Pound, Huq, and the local parties, I do not hear anyone saying: terrible, this must be fixed, there must be an investigation, we must look further at the rest of the hospital. No one has said: "services must be improved". Instead there is a deafening silence. Could it be that it is starting to emerge that our political leaders "saved" the wrong a&e: Hammersmith was brilliant?We need good healthcare, not political "Palaces of Culture" adorning the health landscape.Having established through this documentary that "something is rotten in the sate of Denmark" what are we going to do about it? Any thoughts, worthy Leach's, Breens, Tans, etc. on how to fix Ealing Hospital , I am not a polyglot and do not have the answer to everything?

Alice E. Barter ● 3901d

I'm, afraid that you haven't answered my points at all.Why do you want to spend huge amounts of money on building a new hospital when we already have a hospital?  You seem to think that the building itself poses some kind of risk to people's health - it's only a building (and a reasonably modern one), what matters it what happens inside it.

Thelma Leach ● 3901d

Zero agenda. Just personal experince over thirty years. Experience of family over thirty. Experience of friends over 30 years. Experience of acquaintances over thrity years. Honest off-the-record comment from clinicians. What this video showed is just the tip of the iceberg. We can either play politics (and with that people's lives) or we can seek change to protect lives.

Alice E. Barter ● 3901d

Ealing Hospital essentially consists of 2 elements: the building and the staff (management and clinical/nursing staff).Do you mean that you want to demolish the existing building and build a new hospital at enormous public expense?  Bear in mind that Ealing Hospital is no more than 35 years old if that.  And where would such a hospital be sited?  Land in central Ealing is expensive, hard to find and mostly earmarked for 'luxury' flat developments.  It will be hard to find land to build a new school, let alone a hospital.Or do you mean that you want to change the staff who deliver the service at the hospital?  In that case, why do we need a new hospital building?Surely it is better to try to improve the hospital we already have, rather than to tear it down and start again?Or have I missed some more deeply hidden agenda in your post?

Thelma Leach ● 3901d

I am someone who wants to see a better Ealing. Not an Ealing with a "saved" hospital that is dysfunctional. I want all our politicians to put forward a plan for a new working hospital in the heart of Ealing itself.I am tired of hearing lip-service being paid to Ealing Hospital when even clinicians I know secretly want it closed.

Alice E. Barter ● 3901d

I watched this programme. Frightening. Ealing CCG is paid to commission and monitor this service. Dr Rainsbury sees these merely as allegations. Dr Mark Spencer ?  Healthwatch? Ealing Council?Anyone any helpful comments apart from Thelma leach or have they all gone to sleep. Who are you Alice?

Arthur Breens ● 3901d

Incidentally the consultant responsible for the system massaging for the scan has been one of the more vocal and public clinicians in the save Ealing hospital and save Ealing Hospital A and E campaign for several years.

Alice E. Barter ● 3905d

The fudging of discharge times is something that has been going on for years in the main Ealing Hospital. I racall a neuroloigical MRI scan that I had where I was "discharged" BEFORE the brain scan took place and the consultant interpreted the scan in the following days and "would have" contacted me viw my G.P. if anything anomalous had been found. I can only assume that this was to keep the patient quotas up and treatment times down.Likewise, in the area of medication the main hospital, for example, ENT will not give you medication that you need via the hospital pharmacy, nor even a PESCRIPTION and instead give you a note to take to your doctor. To save money?I do hope that these most competent journalists take a look at what is happening in the main hospital.

Alice E. Barter ● 3905d

It was pretty damning about some of the practices at the Ealing Urgent Care Centre.  I've been there with my husband (11.00 on a Friday night) and we were pleased with the treatment, but he had something quite easy to deal with.However, they made the point on the programme that what triage there is is done by the nurse at the Reception Desk in full view and hearing of anyone waiting.  This is obviously not ideal if you have a condition which you don't want broadcast to the world in general.  Triage should be carried out in a private setting.  There also seemed to be quite a lot of fudging discharge times in order not to breach government guidelines on waiting times.  This means formally discharging patients before treatment has actually been completed which could lead to patients getting 'lost' in the system.  Shortages of common medicines and even wound dressings were also a concern.Lastly, why on earth Care UK allowed an 'intern' (the reporter)into the UCC without checking her credentials, performing a CRB (or whatever it's called now) check or monitoring her while on the unit (she had full run of the place) is something that calls their security procedures into question.All these matters are causes of concern.

Thelma Leach ● 3905d

Was the programme any good?

Gerry Tan ● 3905d

It is on tonight.

Philippa Bond ● 3906d

But they probably wouldn't ask a person with special needs to take their own temperature. Didn't actually see the show but was the patient given a thermometer and told to put it somewhere or were they told to take the reading themselves and give that reading to the medical staff?

Debbie Edwards ● 3906d

Taking your own temperature could be an impossible task for someone with special needs.

Alice E. Barter ● 3906d

The programme is due to be shown tonight.Exposure: NHS Out-of-Hours Undercover, Wednesday, 22nd July, 10:40pm, ITVhttp://www.itv.com/news/london/2015-07-21/medical-staff-under-pressure-tell-patient-to-take-her-own-temperature/Is taking your own temperature such a complicated and questionable task to ask a patient to do?

Philippa Bond ● 3906d