Almost Half UK Hospitals Not Equipped To Deal With Critical Out Of Hours Care

Main Category: GastroIntestinal / Gastroenterology
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 25 Jun 2009 - 4:00 PDT

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The British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) is hosting a meeting at Number 11, Downing Street today to raise awareness of how more than half of Britain's hospitals are providing patients with inadequate services. A UK-wide audit shows that 60% of acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding episodes occurred out of 'normal' working hours yet 45% of hospitals do not provide out of hours endoscopy.

The Society is arranged to meet with Secretary of State for Health, Andy Burnham and Opposition health spokespeople as well as Department of Health representatives to draw attention to this serious issue. Acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding is a major medical emergency that affects over 70,000 people each year and has a hospital mortality of 10-14%.

The BSG believes that hospitals need to offer a 24-hour service including emergency endoscopy, on-site surgical availability and interventional radiology. The meeting will also highlight two other key issues in gastroenterology - minimum standards of care for patients with IBD (a lifelong chronic disease) and the need for advanced Endoscopic technologies to be available in gastrointestinal cancers (preventable).

President of BSG, Professor Chris Hawkey commented:

"Currently emergency out of hours provision for patients with upper gastrointestinal bleeding varies widely across the UK. Some hospitals provide a consultant delivered emergency therapeutic endoscopy service, with appropriate 'rescue' provision for the failures of Endoscopic therapy. In other hospitals such patients are managed by general physicians who lack the necessary skills to perform endoscopy and this leads to delayed endoscopy, referral for operative surgery or transfer to a unit able to undertake therapeutic endoscopy; all of which unfortunately do not provide the best service for the patient."

The meeting will also be attended by patrons such as Carrie Grant, from Fame Academy, who will discuss a campaign aimed at setting in place new minimum standards of care for patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, a condition affecting over 240,000 people in the UK. The BSG is calling for these standards to be implemented by commissioners in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by October 2010.

The Society will also draw attention to gastrointestinal cancer screening and the need for the most advanced Endoscopic technologies to be made available in hospitals throughout the UK through a robust technology assessment and established research networks. The Vice President of BSG, responsible for endoscopy, Dr Edwin Swarbrick, and a team have had preliminary meetings with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Medical Technology and Professor Mike Richards, the lead for cancer services, to discuss ways of improving the quality of endoscopy in cancer care by the adoption of new technologies used widely outside the UK.

Source
IBD Standards
British Society of Gastroenterology

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