Ross Lydall – Evening Standard Sept 24, 2020
Sick children will be turned away from A&E at two major London hospitals throughout the winter to enable them to focus on treating adults with covid.
The paediatric A&E at the Royal Free, in Hampstead, will close at the end of the month. The children’s casualty unit at University College London Hospital, in Bloomsbury, will remain closed, having initially shut to under 18s in March.
It is not known when they will reopen but the closures are said to be “temporary”. The Royal Free and UCLH have been designated as “surge sites” for the feared second wave of covid patients.
Sick children and young people will be redirected several miles away to the Whittington, in Archway, or North Middlesex, in Edmonton – both of which will have their units expanded. Barnet hospital will also accept children.
If a child arrives at the Royal Free or UCLH they will be assessed by specialist nursing teams but will not be admitted to a ward. They may be redirected to other services or, if an emergency admission is required, will be taken by ambulance to another hospital.
If a child is unconscious or not breathing, they will be resuscitated and stabilised before being transferred.
London Ambulance Service will know in advance not to take children to either hospital.
Caroline Clarke, chief executive of the Royal Free London NHS trust, told its board that the changes were “clinically led”. She said: “It’s all about keeping that service safe and going through the winter.”
The changes, which have attracted controversy, have been instigated after a review found that “staffing levels are a challenge to being able to maintain safe and resilient services for children and young people” and recommended running paediatric services in fewer hospitals across north London.
During the first peak, the Royal Free’s children’s department remained open but the paediatric A&E at Barnet was closed.
The Royal Free is also aiming to double adult intensive care capacity, with as much of the hospital kept “covid free” as possible.
There is also the intention to keep Chase Farm hospital, in Enfield, which does not have an A&E, “covid secure” to enable non-covid treatments to continue.
Kate Slemeck, chief executive of the Royal Free, said the aim was for it to increase from 48 intensive care beds to 60-65 but “we could surge well beyond that with additional capacity”. An “uptick” in ICU admissions is expected by “late November”, she said.
The Royal Free’s children and young people’s inpatient beds will also close. UCLH specialist inpatient and day-case services, including cancer haemato-oncology and complex adolescents, will remain open.
Great Ormond Street Hospital will provide more room for urgent elective inpatient and some – but not all – day surgery.
I think they plan to end all free medical treatment in the countries that provide it because of the massive savings they can make, and for the profits to be made from those with money. The best the rest might hope for is some kind of employer insurance.
I also think they plan to do away with national education for the same reasons. The rich don’t want to pay for an education system most of them do not use (forgetting their workers do), while all the working classes need is a few years at junior level to learn to read and do simple maths. Businesses need people who can read and do basic maths. As in the mid-20th century working-class girls may be trained in childcare to nanny for the rich or to cook for them. I see a return of fearful discipline to teach them they’ll do as they’re ordered.
The coup plotters are definitely winding down the NHS. Like many, I use Patient Access, you don’t go automatically to the page you need for appointments or prescriptions. Oh no, you now go to a huge list of private tests and services… yep, tax payer funded site selling private healthcare. Just consider the UKs private healthcare sector… they don’t pay a penny towards the training of doctors and nurses.
When Hampstead is mentioned, the word Satanism comes to mind, since it got revealed a few years ago.