Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Wouldn't be surprised.

Why don't you leave the country now?

cynic:

You say

fred - Bed blocking by patients with alzheimers, etc. who have nowhere else to go except to stay in their hospital bed. This cost needs to be transferred over to the social services side of things.

that has to be one of the more stupid comments you have made recently

That was MY comment, not Fred's.

I don't want to fall out with you but I think your comment on this is actually quite bloody ridiculous!

I'll forgive you your attacking comment , which should actually have been directed towards me and not Fred, if you would kindly care to explain:

1. Why you think it is perfectly acceptable to have bed blocking patients with alzheimers and the like, blocking beds in NHS hospitals.

2. Why should the cost fall on the NHS and not on the local councils who should be providing proper fundinmg and accommodation for these people.

3. And yes, it is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul - but if the problem were properly managed and properly catered for, then at least the NHS hospital bed patients in A&E would get lower length waiting times for their hospital beds, the nurses would be freed uip to do a better nursing job for the ward patients, the alzheimer patients wouldn't need to stay in bed all day, blocking beds for other more needy accident cases and the like.

4. Problems need solutions which have been properly thought out and budgeted for in a more correct and professional manner.

Damn it! Need I go on with this?

EDIT: I will go on with it a bit.

From today's local paper: (Northampton Chronicle)
07:25 Thursday 26 March 2015

The chief executive of Northampton General Hospital has issued a call for urgent action on bed blocking because 110 fit patients are unable to leave its wards.

Although she stresses that delayed discharges are as much NGH’s responsibility as the wider NHS and the county council, Dr Sonia Swart said all parts of the health system were not acting with as much urgency as the county’s hospitals.

She said: “Collectively, we are not meeting the needs of the patients we serve.

“We had more than a hundred delayed discharge patients last week – three-and-a-half wards worth – and, more importantly, the numbers have not been going down.

“Things were agreed last summer to bring them down and we have just had eight weeks of the worst consistent pressure we’ve ever had.

“We were genuinely worried that if this continued it would pose a risk to patients. This is a call to action.”

Dr Swart said that with wards frequently operating a virtual one-in-one out policy, staff wanted to leave and patients were being left without a bed.

She said: “You wouldn’t want a patient with a heart attack, a stroke or major bleed to come to a hospital that is so full they can’t get a bed straight away in the right department​ and that’s what’s happening.

“It’s not what we would want for our families and its not what I’d want for our patients in this hospital and it is having a huge impact on our staff. Staff who are working when we are so pressured are genuinely worried about patients. They haven’t got the time they’d like to explain things to people.

“That makes me feel like this can’t continue.”

Last week, there were 165 fit patients at NGH and KGH who could not be discharged.

Often it’s because elderly people with complex illnesses need home care assessments by social services, which can take days and weeks.

As a result, doctors cannot be sure the patient would be safe at home and so keep them in hospital, stopping new patients being admitted.

Effects of this include long queues in A&E, ambulance response delays, cancelled operations and patients being moved wards in the middle of the night. The nub of the issue is that the pressure is all on hospitals to get patients admitted quickly to hit targets, but there is no similar imperative to get them out quickly when they are better.

One of the major changes, since March, has been to put NHS Northamptonshire Healthcare in sole charge of complex discharges, although it is too early for any positive effects to emerge.

Given the progress,​ though,​ why did NGH and KGH decide to release a letter criticising the county’s discharge system?

Dr Swart said: “I’ve raised this on about 30 occasions in meetings in the last three years. You might see it as unhelpful but it is formally stating to our partners that we have an unacceptable level of risk, which we need to resolve.

“If I hadn’t raised this publicly I might as well ​h​ave sent a letter. What’s the point of writing a letter, they’d put it in a drawer?

“We had 8 weeks of the worst consistent pressure we’ve ever had. We were genuinely worried that if this continued it would pose a risk to patients. This is why we did this.

“If you look at the reports on Morecambe Bay, people were covering things up. We think the public have a right to know what is happening.”

Although actions have been put in place before and since the letter, NGH board members’ worry for staff and patients persists.

Dr Swart said: “It will be a worry until we reduce the pressure in the system so that everyone can go straight to the right bed at any time.

“We are managing our risks as carefully as we can but we were drawing attention to the fact this can’t go on.”

It is fortunate that Cameron will be the next PM.

I see that UKIP and the Greens are getting squeezed.

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/9304Are UKIP and the Greens getting squeezed?

Don't tell me the pilots don't have an emergency override that means they cannot open the door in emergency...surely it would be normal that the pilots should have a password that enables them only to open the door from the outside.....

H/S emigrating? Let me help you decide http://www.emigrate.co.uk/emigration-guides/item-472/top-six-places-to-emigrate

Copilot at fault it seems.....

Baader-Meinof ?

Apparently the two pilot guys 'had words'.

No names have yet been released and so there is no 'name indication' that a pilot who might have been an islamic extremist was involved.

EL - just back from the gym ......
alzheimer's, especially in its latter stages, is hugely difficult to cope with at home for all sorts of very good reasons ..... and for the purpose of the exercise, we'll say dementia and alzheimer's are synonymous

i also suspect that most (all?) residential care homes do not have the necessary specialist staff to cope with this

your idea of robbing peter to pay paul could just as easily be labelled as passing the buck and, even if it was feasible which i personally doubt per above, i cannot see that it would actually save money or resources

however, as i suggested at the outset, collaboration between residential care homes and hospitals is worth exploring as a way of freeing hospital beds by moving those patients for the extra few days required while their "home circumstances" are organised

Manuel.

What about my feelings you have hurt?

...Yeah and me.

no need to worry about you; waste of time anyway
you're already frightfully old, deaf, thick skinned and without long to live anyway :-)
at least you won't clutter up any hospital beds for long

Bleeding cheek!

Apologies, as well as the use of capital letters, seems beneath him.

Arrogant as well as cynical? Hmmm? I wonder. :-)

OK, cynic. It's you who is wanting 'to pass the buck' and not deal with the problem, not me. Let's just keep up the good work filling the beds in NHS hospitals with alzheimers patients.

It's a good bet there are going to be more and more and more and more of them. So many in fact, that your average A&E potential bed wanting patient, is going to have to go round to one of your empty cares homes to get some emergency care.

What a brilliant idea (NOT!): Let's open up an NHS A&E department in every care home, eh?

Manuel,

When I leave hospital I will pee the bed before I walk out and tell them to keep it ready for you!

=====

Tell me how many things have you- forgotten to-day?

Ask your wife.

EL - do you have any idea what it takes to look after a patient with dementia, let alone alzheimer's, which is much nastier?
perhaps you might check it out and then discard your fixation with that particularly unpleasant affliction

then apply yourself to those who block hospital beds for just 5-10 unnecessary days while merely awaiting a ramp to be fitted so they can access their own homes and similar

==========

fred - am i married?

Post:57967

Haze,

Caring Cameron, Lansley,Hunt and IDS have been in charge of NHS, Social Services and Welfare Services for "5 bloody years" and the services are worse.

The services need to integrated, not palmed out to PE., or patients to be kicked out onto the streets.

Integration, means good central organisation of management with devolve funded responsibility.

=-=-=-=-=-

Manuel,

I have to remind you again you are married.

If you keep on telling young girls that you are not I will have to write to your wife!

8-)

Manuel,

If you are not so, it is could be a relief for many.

Integration, means good central organisation of management with devolve funded responsibility

a great sound-bite fred, and i'm sure that is what successive gov'ts have been searching for
however, as they have all found out, the ideal sounds great but the implementation is a total nightmare for all sorts of reasons