Addenbrooke’s Hospital Joins Growing List Of Sites Affected By Demand

Several hospitals across the East Anglia region are among a number across England which have been forced to declare major incidents regarding the number of patients attending Accident and Emergency departments.

Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge is one of the latest to make the announcement and joins the likes of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on the growing list of hospitals affected by such problems.

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital is also reportedly facing a major demand on its emergency services, while the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn is on black alert – which is the level below a major incident.

According to the Eastern Daily Press, new NHS England figures released yesterday show that just one hospital in Norfolk met the target of ensuring at least 95 per cent of patients are seen at A&Es within four hours.

For England overall, it was revealed that 92.6 per cent of patients were seen within the target time between October and December 2014, the worst quarterly result in around a decade. Continued debate regarding how to tackle the pressure faced by emergency departments has led to some calls for an urgent summit to be held to discuss the problem.

Expert Opinion

So many hospitals across England are currently under immense pressure in terms of the demands being placed on accident and emergency services, with it being particularly worrying that such a high concentration of issues seems to have emerged across East Anglia. <br/> <br/>"It is vital at present that everything possible is done to tackle this issue and ensure that medical professionals have the resources to provide the necessary standard of care to patients in a timely manner. <br/> <br/>"Following that, steps will undoubtedly need to be taken to develop strategies and examine recent months to gain a proper understanding of how such problems can be avoided again in the future. In so many instances, timely care is so vital to effective treatment – so lessons have to be learned from these issues." Guy Forster - Partner