A RULE that has required masks to be worn at Gwent’s hospitals was made due to earlier than expected onset of winter illnesses.
But Nicola Prygodzicz, the chief executive of the area’s Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, told its November meeting it is hoped the winter flu and bug season had simply started earlier this year.
She said: “We hope we’ve seen presentation of sickness earlier rather than an additional demand.”
The board has required patients, staff and visitors at all its hospital sites to wear masks since October 7 and has provided masks at entrances to wards and clinical areas and it also asked visitors to limit attendance at hospitals.
The board’s November meeting was told the NHS in Gwent is struggling to cope with increased demand over the past two months and to maintain improvements, reported in October, that reduced the time emergency ambulances have been waiting outside the Grange Hospital in Cwmbran.
High demand
Ms Prygodzicz said: “We’ve seen really high levels of demand and acuity.”
She said there has been “congestion” at the Grange of people waiting to leave for other hospitals which haven’t been able to accommodate them.
However, the Grange has also struggled to provide for its own patients which the chief executive said demonstrated the high levels of demand on acute care with demand in intensive care and said: “It has also been full of people who should be in the Grange.”
Improvements in progressing patients through the Grange, reported in October, were made under the board’s Your Next Patient drive but Ms Prygodzicz said it faces a challenge to maintain that: “That saw significant improvement in lost ambulance hours and long stays in the emergency department but it’s a struggle to try and sustain that level of improvement from early October.”
She said the board has additional capacity in place in response to winter pressures and it will be assessing how it can maintain the improvements it made under the Your Next Patient programme and there will be a fortnight long national focus on hospital discharges during December.