Hospital trust accused of fiddling A&E wait time figures
Atrust where a girl died once a thirty five hour serve a self-propelled vehicle has been defendant of piffling previous Accident & Emergency figures.A national four hour A&E target means ninety five per cent of patients ought to be seen among four hours or admitted to a ward.
But a informant from Worcestershire sauce Acute Hospitals Trust same employees counted some patients as touching the target by claiming they were being treated in a “virtual” ward - although they were physically still in A&E.
The trust's own records show patients at Alexandra Hospital in Redditch were logged as being admitted to a ward called Associate in Nursing "Emergency choices Unit" (EDU) even tho' they really stayed in A&E. In other cases, the times that patients were logged as being moved were at odds with reality, the records showed.
The trust said there was proof of poor processes and recording however no proof employees were deliberately “gaming” the four hour target.
But a whistle blower from the trust told Health Service Journal that employees recorded patient as having been admitted to "EDU" to avoid being “harassed” over breaches of the four hour target.
Such patients were not moved from A&E in any respect, the member of staff same.
Minutes from a senior managers’ meeting obtained by HSJ show the term was in use as early as 2013.
A former staff member WHO worked within the trust’s A&E department same the virtual EDU was nicknamed a “breach turning away unit”.
The source conjointly same employees felt below pressure from managers to “falsify records for the four hour target”, and nurses did not want trust managers “harassing” them over four hour breaches.
A trust spokesman same the trust did not recognise these claims and refuted them.
The whistleblower, who needed to stay anonymous, said employees would “pretend” a patient had moved into Associate in Nursing EDU however would not physically move the patient out of A&E.
This would enable A&E nurses to still take care of the “admitted” patient while not having to unfold themselves a lot of thinly by operating in each the A&E and actual EDU wards.
“Very often it was at the hours of darkness or weekends, where there were only a few employees,” the source same.
In February 2015, the trust asked its audit committee to look into the allegations but found “no proof on the manipulation of data”.
In November 2016, the committee looked into “a small range of cases” wherever the times entered for admission in pc notes “did not tally” with the time in paper notes.
The audit concluded that these cases were administration errors rather than a trial to gift the trust during a higherlightweight.
The trust came under scrutiny last month for long A&E waits, once the death of a girl from asystole after thirty five hours on self-propelled vehicle at Worcestershire sauce Royal Hospital.
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