NHS Grampian hospitals remain under pressure after 'critical incident' declared over weekend

Hospitals in the North East of Scotland remain under pressure after NHS Grampian declared a critical incident over the weekend.

Some patients were sent to neighbouring health boards after Dr Gray’s Hospital in Elgin and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (ARI) faced “extreme pressure” on their emergency services.

It was the second critical incident in the north east in the past two years.

Following improved hospital capacity at ARI, the board-level critical incident was stood down on Monday, however, a hospital-level critical incident for Dr Gray’s Hospital will remain in place until further notice.

NHS Grampian blamed the local public holiday and staffing shortages, adding that overcapacity in hospitals and delays to discharging patients also contributed to the situation over the weekend.

‘No capacity to safely admit patients’

Alex Stephen, who has taken over as NHS Grampian executive director on call today, explained: “We are hugely grateful to colleagues across our local and regional health and social care system for being there to support us during a particularly challenging weekend.

“The key area of pressure over the weekend came when Dr Gray’s no longer had capacity to safely admit patients, compounded by staffing shortages, ambulance delays, lack of community capacity and increasing pressure at ARI.

“Retaining an incident management team approach for Dr Gray’s will enable us to continue to focus on breaking the cycle of high bed occupancy at the hospital, including case-by-base reviews of all patients who are delayed in hospital and who are awaiting care in the community.

“We will continue to work shoulder-to-shoulder with multi-agency partners, including NHS 24, GMED, MIUs, community hospitals and community care teams, to ensure a safe and sustainable environment for both patients and staff.

“We appreciate this situation will be concerning for the local community and I’m keen to underline that we are always preparing for what may be to come as well as the situation presents itself in front of us.

“While teams across our health and social care system are stretched, they are also delivering excellent care day-in-day-out and it’s important we don’t lose sight of that.”

‘Care reform would ease pressures on hospitals’, says FM

Due to the “extreme pressures” facing staff, a small number of patients were transferred from Dr Gray’s to Raigmore Hospital on Saturday evening.

First Minister John Swinney said hospitals are operating at an overly high level and said some patients were attending hospital rather than attending pharmacies or walk-in clinics.

He added that reforming social care would free up hospital beds for patients unable to be discharged due to a lack of care in the community.

He said: “I think at the core of the issues at NHS Grampian has been that the number of patients who are delayed from leaving hospital because of availability of a care package in the community, that’s an essential part of why I want to reform social care so that members of the public can receive the support that they require, they don’t have to spend longer than possible in hospital and our hospitals can avoid being congested as they clearly have been in the NHS Grampian area.”

Swinney said his government will work with NHS Grampian to resolve issues and tackle delayed discharges, where people could be receiving treatment at home.