ABLEnews Worl Desk

         ICU Doors Slammed on British Patients
          
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An urgent review of hospital intensive care facilities was ordered by
the Government yesterday after a nationwide survey disclosed serious
shortages of beds. In some areas, up to half of all such patients
referred to hospital are refused admission. The survey, commissioned
by the Department of Health, said that patients were turned away
either because of lack of beds or because there were insufficient
nurses to care for them.
   
It was a further embarrassment for the Government following reports
last week that hospitals were appealing to patients to stay away from
accident and emergency units, except in crises, because the drive to
cut junior doctors' hours was making it difficult to staff the units
at all times.
   
A separate survey by doctors at St George's Hospital, in Tooting,
south-west London, reported that intensive care units were frequently
full, forcing the transfer by ambulance of critically-ill patients to
any hospital that could take them.
   
Intensive care units are equipped with high technology equipment to
treat patients suffering failure of vital organs. The daily cost of
keeping a patient in intensive care was 800 to 1,000 pounds. If two
nurses are in round-the-clock attendance, it could reach 2,000 pounds.
   
The two studies have shown that doctors often spent hours searching
for a bed when critically ill patients required treatment. According
to the Health Department's survey, a one-night census found that one
in five of the country's 2,600 intensive care beds was closed. Many
did not have a consultant present.
   
    One in six people wrongly sent for intensive care
    
Mr. Tom Sackville, junior Health Minister, acknowledged that there was
cause for concern and there were "particular pressure points". He said
he was asking each health authority to examine how its intensive care
services were used and how many beds it needed.
   
The report showed that one in six people was wrongly sent for
intensive care--either because they were too ill to have any chance of
benefiting or because they were not ill enough to need it, he added.

[CURE Comment: This is a prescription for prognosis euthanasia. i.e.,
of we don't think you will get well...or well enough...we'll make sure
you don't by denying you critical care.]
   
"There is a difficult balance to strike. It is no good hospitals
establishing larger intensive care facilities to satisfy peaks of
demand. Highly-staffed beds then lie empty the rest of the year."
   
Publication of the Department of Health report was brought forward by
ministers in an attempt to show that action was being taken to meet
the concerns over the shortage of intensive care.
   
The report spoke of "considerable concern" recently, from both the
medical profession and the public, that "the provision of intensive
care in England is inadequate, and that patients are dying
unnecessarily because they are denied admission to intensive care
units".
   
Examination of six intensive care units throughout the country, over
three months, showed that an average of one in four patients was
turned away. In one hospital, the rate exceeded 50 per cent.
   
According to the report, 45 per cent of patients refused admission die
within 90 days, compared with 37 per cent of those who are admitted.
   
"Most worrying was the finding that in 39 per cent of responding units
no consultant, of any speciality, was present at any time during the
census day."
   
[Intensive Care Hit by Bed Shortage, David Fletcher, Peter Pallot, and
George Jones, London Telegraph, February 8, 1995]

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