Shropshire A&E patients had to wait 10 HOURS
Health bosses found five patients waiting more than 10 hours in Shropshire's A&E departments during an un-announced inspection.
Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group has carried out 12 unannounced visits to the trust which runs Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Telford's Princess Royal since December 1 last year.
The five patients waiting more than 10 hours were discovered at an unannounced visit on April 21.
Barbara Beal, interim director of nursing, quality, patient safety and experience at Shropshire CCG, said that on each visit officials found patients had received "safe care".
She said: "The CCG carried out 12 unannounced visits to the trust since December 1 2016, during times of high escalation, to seek real-time assurance on patient care, safety and experience.
"On each occasion during the snapshot visits patients had received safe care."
Ms Beal said the trust had reported 16 patients waiting more than 12-hours on January 27 at PRH.
She added: "The system review of these cases identified that no patients had experienced harm as a result of the extended waits and the A&E delivery board have received a report on learning to help prevent future reoccurrences.
"The CCGs undertook an unannounced visit to review the quality, safety and experience of patients on April 21.
"At the CCG meeting with the trust interim chief nurse on April 11 the interim chief nurse identified the work he was undertaking to review the boarding of patients, increasing the bed profile in six bedded bays, and introduction of red and green days.
"The findings of the unannounced visit were that whilst no patients were being boarded at the time of the visit, and the ED department was safe, there was one exception – five patients were identified as being in the ED department for over 10 hours with no decision to admit.
"This was raised and challenged at the April CQRM and the trust are to present a patient harm analysis and findings and harm analysis at the May 17 Clinical Quality Review Meeting CQRM.
"It was also noted that some staff appeared not to consider this unacceptable, and this has been escalated to the interim chief nurse to action.
"The main findings were that the emergency department was 'safe' at the time of the unannounced visit, and patients stated to the visiting team that they were ‘satisfied’ with the care provided and had no concerns."
