Wait for a bed 'worse than expected' at Wigan's hospitals, say patients

Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WWL) was rated as being “about the same” as other NHS trusts in most areas of the adult inpatient survey by the Care Quality Commission.

But patients considered their experience to be “somewhat worse than expected” when it came to admission to hospital, with a score of 6.1 out of 10.

The sub-category of waiting to get a bed on a ward – which was patients feeling they did not have to wait for a long time – was judged as “worse than expected”, at 5.3 out of 10.

The availability of beds on wards within the trust, which runs Wigan and Leigh infirmaries and Wrightington Hospital, has been an issue for some time.

Last winter bosses declared a “critical incident” several times, due to high numbers of patients and discharge delays.

Last month, Prof Ayaz Abbasi, consultant in emergency medicine and clinical director for quality and safety, took the unusual step of speaking out about the problems, calling for more hospital beds.

Separate data published by NHS England shows 1,389 patients had to wait for more than four hours for a bed on a ward last month, after the decision to admit was made, while 222 had to wait for over 12 hours.

Wigan’s hospital leaders have been working to support patients who are medically fit but unable to go home for another reason, and urging people to only go to A&E if necessary, to reduce the number of patients in hospital.

Chief nurse Rabina said: “WWL has been making improvements to address the pressures on our emergency department through a number of ways, such as utilising our same-day emergency care unit to divert patients away from A&E to a more appropriate level of care, which includes rapid assessment, diagnosis and treatment without being admitted to a ward, and, if clinically safe to do so, a return home.

"Our pioneering virtual ward service is also playing a huge part, allowing patients to be monitored and treated within the comfort of their own homes.”

The new survey looks at the experiences of 63,224 people, across 133 NHS trusts, who spent at least one night in hospital as an inpatient during November 2022.

Questions included in the survey follow people’s journeys from admission to hospital, treatment and discharge.

Between January and April 2023, 1,250 people at each participating NHS trusts were invited to take part in the survey, with responses received from 437 people at WWL.

Questions included in the survey follow people’s journeys from admission to hospital, treatment and discharge.

WWL was rated to be “about the same” as most trusts in the majority of areas.

Alternative ratings were given in two other areas – patients judged their experiences of being able to take their own medication when needed as “somewhat worse than expected” and the cleanliness of rooms or wards was “somewhat better than expected”.

Nationally, eight trusts were classed as much better than expected, four as better than expected, six as worse than expected and one as much worse than expected. All the rest were classed as about the same.