East Lancashire GPs 'referring too many patients' (From Blackburn Citizen)

So now the ELHT is blaming the GPs?

Tony Greaves

How dare these thoughtless patients get ill? They are interfering with the statistics and spoiling the lovely figures which prove how well the Hospital Trust is performing.

Oh what a mess this Labour government have created with its NHS 'targets'.

The solution is staring both the PCT (east lancs NHS) and the hosptital trust in the face yet they can't figure it out?

Firstly, the government's NHS plan was to set targets for patients to be treated within 18 weeks of when the patient was referred (to hospital) from their GP.

Hence Problem 1. Closing down the acute services at Burnley meant most of the referrals went to the centralised acute services at Blackburn. Since there is now only the ONE hospital in Blackburn for acute treatment the increase cannot be catered for and hence the pattern of failures such as cancellations and more beds needed.

The four hour target means getting A&E patients treated or stabilised in a bed within four hours of them being admitted to hospital.

This leads us to Problem 2. There's already a shortage of beds due to elective patients as stated above and elective surgery for the 18 week referrrals has to be cancelled to make way for the emergencies, which compounds the whole problem.

Actually, when you think about it, the problems above follow a 'pattern' that shows this is a vicious circle that can only get worse UNLESS some of the elective patients or emergency patients are treated at a hospital OTHER than Blackburn royal.

Well, Burnley general can't do it, since it is not a provider of acute treatment and elective surgery is minimal (only certain elective treatments available).

This NHS 'plan' was not a 'plan' at all but a 'vision' by Sir George Alberti that centralising acute services would cut NHS trust debt and at the same time meet patients needs by providing higher quality treatment.

If Alberti's plan was such a wonderful idea it would have been implemented decades ago. But no, it's only been introduced recently due to private finance deals (PFI) between NHS trusts and private contractors.

Cath Galaska lives in cloud cuckoo land. Does she really think GPs are 'crystal ball gazers' and only refer patients when waiting times are down. What nonsense!
Alan Green seems to think it is actually possible to 'predict accurately' how many patients the hospital is likely to have, maybe they should employ mystic meg?

If I was a GP I would check availability and the 18 week list. If unavailable I'd refer my patients elsewhere (to the dismay of Alan Green, a supposed Burnleyite who supported removing the A&E at Burnley)

The solution is simple, return A&E services to Burnley General Hospital so the workload is shared, targets met, no overstretched hospital, and better treatment.

The leader of burnley council Gordon birtwistle this week marched from Burnley General to Blackburn hospital and handed over a 2000 signed petition demanding A&E services be returned to Burnley. It seems only the Lib Dems are listening and actually doing something about this whole mess.

The next general elections will tell... well done Gordon and all those campaining to reinstate A&E services where they are needed.

Perhaps halving the number of GPs (like they halved the number of A&E departments) would 'solve' their problem?

Well here we go with the excuses, now the trust are blaming doctors for refering patients to hospital.
Next they will be blaming the Bus and Train services for providing services to get to blackburn, ie no public transport fewer people from the Burnley area. The trust will not admit that they can not cope with the extra patients from the Burnley area.
I think that i may have the solution to why the trust will not back down. When the situation gets disastrious they will be asked to resign. And we all know what happens then they will all recieve massive pay offs paid for by the tax payer. Well trust members your dastardly plan has been uncovered.
Lawrence Burnley

the trust has experienced a huge battering recently with staff being convicted, sacked and suspended for violence etc and rightly so. The trust needs to tighten up in the right areas, appointments to ill people yes, paying wages to staff that abuse and bully, NO! think of the money the trust would save without all of these "investigations" if they just sacked them and used the cash to finance DRS and appointments

Val Bertenshaw has let the cat out of the bag "We can't carry on doing this" she states that this is a national problem, particularly in the Northwest,nothing to do with the Meeting Patients Needs, PFI ward /department relocations that have decimated our local health services.
I do not blame Val, she is the spokesperson for the trust, but the predicted numbers of expected throughput of patients will never be precise so you should always leave some slack, the the problem is that in the bed cutting and downsizing of facilities due to fiscal ie money matters leaves no room to take any extra strainhow many people have been made redundant/ redeployed in the trust in the last 3 years leaving units understaffed.
I have had to use my GP in the last few weeks and can assure you that they are not at all keen to refer you to the acute trust, the basics are the primary care trust's give the GPs money to treat their patients, the GPs find the best "shops" ie hospitals to spend the money they have to make people better at a reasonable price, if the local acute hospitals do not give this they like you would shop somewhere else Preston/ Blackpool etc. by being buyers of health care you could end up having your bunions treated in Blackpool hospital then you could have a nice limp down the prom afterwards!!!
so why bite the hand that feeds you,the trust seem to be, the GPs are educated rottweilers watch this space for their attack.

If a GP refers a patient then there must be a damned good reason why.
How many of these patients were sent up for nothing?
Don't blame the doctors for failing NHS practises because at the end of the day they are only doing their job!

Doctors referring too many patients, don't make me laugh, it's the last thing most doctors want to do, refer somebody to the hospital with the way it's going! The worst thing they did was integrate the hospitals & move everything to Blackburn. The standard of care has gone downhill rapidly. The hospital is understaffed and if you're lucky enough to actually get an appointment there's no guarantees you will actually be seen on time or on the day with all the cancellations and delays. People that are sick are not getting better as there just isn't anything being done, the resources just aren't there. The staff just don't have the time to get to know the patient or read their notes half the time let alone be able to give the advice and treatment needed. It's about time the situation was reviewed and to be perfectly honest in my opinion they should just go back to everything the way it was before the new hospital opened up, at least back then you stood a chance of receiving treatment for whatever condition ailed you.

ive been docs twice in 2 years,same faces every time,scivers and junkies..these people should be ashamed