Amalgamation of Walk-in Centre, Out of Hours GP services and A&E at Rochdale Infirmary

Posted By: Wera Hobhouse
Date Posted: 04/11/2009

We held a special meeting of the Health Overview and Scrutiny committee this afternoon to urgently look into the crisis created at Rochdale Infirmary since A&E, Walk-In Centre and Out of Hours GP services were ‘co-located’ in August this year.

In September at a Joint Overview and Scrutiny committee meeting members from all four Councils served by the Pennine Acute Hospital Trust (Bury, Manchester Oldham and Rochdale) were told that the co-location had gone well, patients were happy and waiting times were shorter. 

On Saturday the 10th of October I took my son to the Rochdale  A&E with a head injury and witnessed a crisis. The waiting area was badly overcrowded and patients had to stand or sit on the floor; it took almost an hour to be seen by the triage nurse and when my son was finally attended to nearly four hours later (which is just within the target) he wasn’t seen by an A&E doctor but a GP who covered for the Out of Hours GP services.

My colleague Cllr Jean Ashworth, who accompanied a friend to A&E two days later, experienced a similar situation; waiting times had increased for some patients to 6 hours. Once waiting times go beyond 4 hours, which is a national target for all hospital trust, the red lights go on.

We brought our concerns to the Rochdale Health Overview and Scrutiny the following day (13th Oct) and the committee decided that an urgent review was necessary. The bottom line of our concerns was that patients’ safety might be at risk while staff morale was a rock bottom.

At today’s special meeting the PCT and the Acute Trust acknowledged that there was a crisis and that the initially smooth co-location had gone pear shaped at the beginning of October.

Management tried to explain that the increase in patient numbers particularly at weekends was unexpected. They acknowledged that sending all patients via one triage nurse had created a bottleneck, putting unacceptable pressure on the triage nurse and all other staff who had to cope with the subsequent delays and patients’ discomfort and discontent.

Managers were aware of the urgent need to address the problem and presented a number of changes in staff shifts and the management of patient flows that had been implemented this week. The committee was told that the situation was monitored on a weekly basis.

The committee decided to allow the PCT and the Acute Trust time until the next regular meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny committee on 8th of December for the recent actions to impact. The committee asked that a feasibility study should be prepared about how long it would take to reopen the Walk-In centre. The committee indicated that it will call for the Walk-In centre to be reopened if the situation at the Infirmary has not markedly improved by the time of the next meeting.