Hospital trust to face questions over series of ‘failings’ by NHS

Members of a special scrutiny committee of Wakefield Council will get the chance next Wednesday to question Ruth Unwin, director of development at the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Dewsbury and District, Pontefract and Pinderfields hospitals.

Councillors are concerned about the performance of the trust in four key areas – emergency care, mixed-sex accommodation, referral to treatment and the paediatric assessment facility in the accident and emergency (A&E) department at Pontefract.

Local politicians are particularly concerned about the number of breaches of the mixed-sex accommodation guidelines and the trust’s performance in relation to the total time in A&E.

A report to members of social care and health scrutiny committee says the “level of underperformance” in relation to the total time in A&E “is of national significance as they (Mid Yorkshire) rank as one of the 10 trusts nationally who failed to deliver the year-end target.”

On the subject of mixed-sex wards, the trust has told the council that figures are improving.

Trusts can face fines of £250 per breach of rules designed to ensure wards are same-sex.

Mid Yorkshire was reported to have breached the rules 69 times in December, 122 times in January, 158 times in February and 101 times in March.

The trust has indicated that the April figures will show that breaches have almost halved.

Nationally, almost half of NHS trusts are still putting patients in mixed-sex accommodation.

The council report says: “The trust has said the majority of breaches were in acute assessment units, where patients are assessed before being admitted to a ward, and were resolved within a few hours. They occurred during a very busy period when large numbers of patients needed emergency care.”

Members of the committee have been told by the trust of difficulties in providing medical cover for the children’s assessment facility at Pontefract A&E.

The service should be available from 9am to 9pm weekdays but is currently only operating from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Thursday, and 9am to 1pm on Fridays, the report notes.

This is a temporary change until the medical cover situation can be resolved, the trust says.

When cover is not available, children are taken by ambulance to Pinderfields. Children arriving at Pontefract who require admission are transferred to Pinderfields – which is the situation 24 hours a day as there is no in-patient facility for children at Pontefract.

The report concludes that the pressure on beds at the new hospitals at Pontefract and Pinderfields is having a knock-on effect on the trust’s performance.

“The overview and scrutiny committee has consistently argued that a significant increase in capacity of intermediate and community care would be required to offset the reduction in acute beds, and even then concerns about the size of the new hospitals was still a major issue. It is now clear that there is significant and continuing pressure on beds particularly at the Wakefield site, primarily as a result of continual and increasing trend of A&E attendances and urgent admissions.

“It would seem that these pressures may be having an impact on the relative performance of the Trust in key areas of activity,”

In a statement, trust director Ms Unwin said: “Through attendance at meetings and ongoing briefings, we regularly keep our local overview and scrutiny committees (OSC) up-to-date.

“This meeting is one of our regular update meetings and I will be briefing the OSC on the range of actions we are taking, with our partners, to ensure we provide high quality, safe patient care and meet national performance and quality targets.”