An NHS trust which operates hospitals in South Cumbria has stepped down from its earlier declared “critical incident” status.
The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust – which runs hospitals in South Cumbria and North Lancashire – declared a major incident on January 3 in response to “extremely high” numbers in its hospitals, challenges in discharging patients who are well enough to leave hospital and staff sickness.
Because of these pressures, the trust took the decision to escalate to its highest level of internal incident which allows it to take additional steps to maintain safe services for patients and to help it to deal with the pressures.
This included postponing non-urgent operations and outpatient appoints to accommodate those with the most urgent clinical need. Cancer and most other urgent operations and appointments continued to be prioritised, the trust said.
On Sunday the decision was made to step down from a critical incident, despite the trust “experiencing significant pressures” and remaining at “its highest level of internal escalation”.
The trust said it had “now put into place all of the actions being in a critical incident allow so it is the right time to officially step it down”.
The actions taken by our teams to try to relieve the pressures are starting to make a small but important impact. For example, the trust has:
- Opened additional beds at WGH and relocated 20 patients who are deemed as medically fit to be discharged. This has freed up 20 beds at the RLI for patients with a greater clinical need;
- Opened a ward at the RLI that will be used for COVID-19 positive and resolving COVID-19 patients. It is hoped that 15 patients will be moved onto the ward by the end of the week;
- Developed plans to open further beds at WGH and the RLI;
- Redeployed colleagues to assist in areas that need support;
- Reinstated incident ‘cells’ (such as workforce, operations, communications, etc) meaning expert support and advice is easily accessible for teams;
- Extended the opening hours of our Occupational Health and Wellbeing service meaning colleagues have access to specialist support seven days a week;
- Stood up the Incident Management Team meetings to seven days a week to allow trust and system leads to come together to make decisions and offer guidance in a more timely way;
- Followed new national guidance regarding isolation after a positive COVID-19 result to support colleagues to return to work as soon as it is safe to do so;
- Increased access to COVID-19 PCR testing to allow colleagues and members of their households to be tested and get their results quickly;
- Stood down some corporate level meetings and areas of work to allow colleagues to focus on the pressures on services;
- Put a call out to all colleagues who would like to volunteer to be redeployed into other areas.
As a result of this work, the trust says its starting to see reduced wait times and smaller numbers of people in its emergency departments – although they are still too high.
UHMBT is also seeing its sickness absence rate remain at around 12.5% – which equates to around 1,000 staff unable to work. Despite this being a lot higher than the trust would usually see, it is not currently increasing at the rate UHMBT expected.
The trust is working with partners across Lancashire and South Cumbria to discharge patients who are medically fit to be discharged.
Whilst stepping down the incident is positive news and a real testament to staff, teams will continue to work together to focus on the actions put in place to ensure the trust can provide safe services for patients and the best possible work environment for colleagues.
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