And the excuses keep on coming......( Yawn )

We're just in the New Year and already the Cardiff and Vale Universally Inept Health Board are trotting out the perennial excuses for long patient queues in corridors on trolleys. Since my predictive post of the 17th December 2012, it hasn't taken the C&V U.I.H.B even one calendar month to start trotting out their lame excuses for their incompetent dealings with emergency admissions.

At the last report ( Echo 4th January ), up to 11 patients at one time were waiting, in a corridor, more than six hours, just to be properly assessed.  And these are Emergency patients, deemed sufficiently ill to warrant immediate attention !  So, a doctor or relative dials 999 because of this and, when the ambulance eventually arrives, the poor patient is rushed to A & E at UHW where they are expected to receive EMERGENCY treatment.  Instead, they are put in a queue of trolleys in the cold corridor, awaiting to be treated with the urgency they deserve. Worse still, they are denied the company of relatives and/or friends because they only add to the clutter-chaos in the corridor.

Dr Richard Evans, Divisional Director of medicine at C&V U.I.H.B, says that the emergency unit is "Under extreme pressure following the festive period..", and, "Our clinical teams are working hard to manage this increased demand" ( probably with the same number of staff from 'normal' days unfairly  expected to cope with three or four times the demand on their services .) 

Now, if this were the first festive period we ever had - bang in the middle of the winter flu outbreak - you might say "Well, how could they have known ?"  The truthful, unpalatable fact is that we've had this situation every bleedin' year for three decades at least, so we might expect the Health Authority to recognise this historical, inescapable fact and PLAN FOR THESE SEASONAL ANOMALIES. But no, we just get our intelligence insulted by pathetic, perennial excuses that are - in reality - the result of poor planning, bad management, and the current trend of 'Trying to Make the Patients Fit the Service'.  Oops ! - did I just use the term 'poor planning' - big mistake.  Recent consultations on changes to our health service ( over the past 15 years ) have shown us that the so-called 'Planning Team' couldn't plan their way out of a cul-de-sac ! Yet, every year, these same incompetent pillocks waste millions of OUR pounds on daft, unaffordable - and always woefully inadequate -capital projects and reorganisation schemes that at are supposed to be Fit For Purpose { whatever the blazes that's supposed to mean ). And - surprise surprise - each one turns out a service that is, smaller, more useless and more inaccessible than its' predecessor.

We'll be alright though, because Minister Leslie Griffiths is on the job saying things like "this situation is unacceptable" and "action must be taken to sort the problems out." Of course, she neglects to offer a "How" ?, "Why", ? "What ?" "When " by Whom ?", or anything that we could take as being constructive or helpful, even.  Doubtless, she will blame the poor Ambulance Trust for taking too long to answer emergency calls because they're all gridlocked outside UHW A & E..  R.W.