By Charlotte Webster-
Patients at Romford hospital have been waiting for over three days for an X ray and relying on ambulance services all the way from Brixton, despite local ambulances existing in nearby areas.
The Care Quality Commission told Queen’s Hospital in Romford that it “requires improvement” during its last inspection in January 2020 , it added in a new report there were still many areas it had to work on. The hospital’s trust chief executive said there were some positives to take away and the hospital had struggled with long waiting times for many years.
After the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors carried out an unannounced inspection at Queen’s Hospital in November, and published their findings on March 4, this publication found many patients still waiting for Xrays three days after their arrival in hospital.
In some cases, nurses could not distinguish between patients who had been treated and those who were waiting for treatment.
Waiting times and overcrowding for patients in the emergency department is a big problem at Queens hospital. The hospital is also notorious for poor communication between departments and there were delays in patients being sent home or into care homes.
The inspectors said in their report that they: “Found that local services did not always work together to reduce attendances or the length of stay in the emergency department. This resulted in situations of overcrowding, compromised infection control and extended waits for treatment which impacted on outcomes for patients.
“We found examples of delays in discharge from acute medical care impacting on patient flow across urgent and emergency care pathways. This also resulted in delays in handovers from ambulance crews and prolonged waits in the emergency department due to the lack of bed capacity.
“We also found patients in the emergency department for whom a decision to admit had been made; however, they were still waiting in excess of 24 hours before being transferred to a bed on the ward. These delays exposed people to a risk of harm.”
The hospital’s warning by the CQC to work to improve A&E waiting times so patients were not waiting any longer than four hours and also improve ambulance handover times and infection control appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
We found a number of patients who were still waiting to be treated , but not prepared to give their names for fear of being treated badly by medical practitioners.
There is also a question of why ambulance personnel spend a long time at the hospital rather than being active in fulfilling their duty as an emergency service.
Queen’s Hospital is run by Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Trust, which also runs the King George Hospital in Goodmayes.
The hospital was contacted for comment.