‘Exclusion criteria’ mean existing hospitals’ resources are drained into new facilities
The government’s new Nightingale hospitals are being protected by the Tories from caring for the sickest coronavirus patients – and the government’s rules for patients hospitals are allowed to transfer are sucking resources away from front-line existing NHS care.
A leaked list of the ‘exclusion criteria’ for hospitals looking to send a patient needing care to a Nightingale facility mean that the most ill patients are barred and must remain in pre-existing hospitals:
While some of these are similar to the admission rules given to other hospitals by the Department of Health, the more extensive list means that the new facilities are likely to have lower death rates and can be painted by Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson as a success.
More worrying still is the fact that any hospital that is allowed to send a patient also has to send the staff and equipment that each patient needs to the Nightingale facility.
This means that each transfer to a Nightingale is sucking away front-line resources from other hospitals, rather than adding genuine capacity.
With the Tories, the devil is always in the detail – and these details make the new facilities look like a PR sham to con the British public.
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