Hospital Apologizes for Using Café as Emergency Room
A hospital chief apologized after an emergency room in Kent had used its café as a provisional community. The A&E employees in the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford decided to coordinate the building’s café to create space for the treatment of patients. The NHS Foundation Trust of the East Kent Hospitals University said that the step was due to “considerable demand”.
Unacceptable Conditions
The Managing Director of Trust, said: “We know that this is unacceptable, and we are very sorry for patients who have been looked after in this way.” A “small number” of patients was looked after in the café until emergency patients could be redirected to other hospitals to Kent.
Criticism and Concerns
Labor MP said it was “not acceptable” to use corridors for the care of patients, but the employees had “incredibly hard under very difficult circumstances caused by one and a half decades”. However, he said that the management in the hospitals in East Kent “has to help improve the standards across all care levels”.
Call for Investment
Ken Rogers, Chairman of Health in East Kent, said: “This type of patient experience will never end unless there will be serious investments in East Kent”. The acute care in East Kent will finally “collapse” without intervention, he added. He said he wrote to the health secretary and invited him to visit the region’s hospitals and request further investments.
Government Response
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs said that the incident was “unacceptable”, and the government expected the hospital to “take urgent measures to tackle this”. They said the government “worked at speed” to improve emergency care for patients. The hospital’s Managing Director said that it was “sometimes necessary” to treat patients in corridors despite the efforts of the staff, but this use of the café “Will not happen again”. The trust was ranked 101 of 134 in a league of the Trusts performance that NHS England published in the early this month.
