Nikki Fox of the BBC reports on the meltdown in mental health services:
An NHS trust was told there were no mental health beds available across England, its medical director has said.
Dr Bohdan Solomka told the BBC on Sunday the lack of beds applied across the NHS and among private providers.
This weekend, Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) couldn’t provide a service to those in crisis and put Approved Mental Health Professionals (AMHPs) in an impossible position when there was nowhere in the entire country, private or NHS, for patients in need.
We’ve moved on from an out of area beds crisis to a not even out of area beds crisis. This is a disaster. Yet NHS England restarts the NHS Blame Game rather than demonstrating leadership and taking responsibility:
Dr Bohdan Solomka told the BBC on Sunday the lack of beds applied across the NHS and among private providers.
The Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust medical director’s revelation prompted Norwich MP Clive Lewis to call for delays in planned bed closures.
NHS England said it was up to local NHS commissioners to ensure patients got the care they needed.
Dr Solomka confirmed that up to Sunday night “there were no adult acute inpatient beds in England available to us either from NHS or private providers”.
Clive Lewis MP is right to call this a national disgrace:
In response Mr Lewis, Norwich South MP, called for a suspension of planned bed closures in Norfolk and Suffolk until community services were able to cope with current levels of demand.
He has also asked for an urgent review into the support given to the trust from NHS England and the area’s clinical commissioning groups which fund the beds.
“It’s a national disgrace that there are no mental health beds for those who need them,” Mr Lewis said.
“It is simply unimaginable that in the event of a heart attack someone would be left with no A&E bed available anywhere in the country. Why is this accepted for those with a mental rather than physical health crisis?”
NSFT claimed:
The trust said it was dealing with the shortage by using a process called “extended overnight leave” a system where patients are discharged for the evening on the understanding their bed would be available if needed.
But a bed is not available when somebody else is sleeping in it, is it?
NSFT is planning a further £36 million of cuts and to pay a new Director of Research £150,000 per year.
Terry Skyrme, of the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk, said the shortage was down to underinvestment.
“The Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Trust is still closing beds, such as at Carlton Court near Lowestoft, despite NSFT always having patients out of area and after being told by the CQC and Monitor that there must be sufficient local beds for local needs.
“We are being told by mental health professionals that the bed crisis is worsening and spreading nationwide. For how long can commissioners and NHS England cover their eyes and pretend there is no crisis in mental health provision?”
How can we have confidence in NHS England, responsible for this mess, when it makes meaningless statements like the one below after it has overseen the closure of more than 2,100 mental health beds:
NHS England said people with mental health needs deserved the same level of care as those with physical health needs.
“Local NHS commissioners, providers and the local authority need to continue to work together to ensure all patients needing help for their mental health get the care and support they need,” a spokesman said.
No surprise that:
The lead commissioners for mental health in Norfolk, South Norfolk Clinical Commissioning Group, were unavailable for comment.
The commissioners promised that out of area placements would end by the end of April 2014. Now out of area placements have ended because all the private hospital beds are full.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) demanded that there should be sufficient beds in Norfolk and Suffolk for local people when NSFT was rated Inadequate.
Is it that the bureaucrats couldn’t run a bath or couldn’t care less?
Where’s the minister responsible, Alistair Burt?
Click on the image below to read the story in full on the BBC News website:
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A severe geomagnetic storm could cause colorful auroras over Northern California and Alabama
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Colorful auroras could be visible in areas of the United States such as Alabama and Northern California — much farther south than they typically appear — on Thursday evening due to a powerful solar flare and coronal mass ejection released from the sun, according to the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
The severe solar storm, classified as a level 4 on a scale from 1 to 5, also could disrupt communications, the power grid and satellite operations, according to officials at the center.
The storm is expected to reach Earth between early morning and 12 p.m. ET Thursday, with the potential to last through Friday.
The intensity and full characteristics of the storm, moving toward Earth at more than 2.5 million miles per hour (about 4 million kilometers per hour), won’t be known until it reaches the Deep Space Climate Observatory and the Advanced Composition Explorer satellites orbiting 1 million miles from Earth.
The satellites will measure the speed and magnetic intensity of the storm, which is expected to arrive at Earth 15 to 30 minutes after reaching the space observatories, said Shawn Dahl, service coordinator for the Space Weather Prediction Center, at a news briefing Wednesday.
A series of the most intense type of solar flares, known as X-class flares, have released from the sun this week. The flares also coincided with coronal mass ejections on Tuesday.
Coronal mass ejections are large clouds of ionized gas called plasma and magnetic fields that erupt from the sun’s outer atmosphere. When these outbursts are directed at Earth, they can cause geomagnetic storms, or major disturbances of Earth’s magnetic field.
“Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on Earth’s surface,” according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.
As a result, the center has notified the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the North American power grid and satellite operators to prepare for disruptions, especially given the amount of preparations and expected relief efforts for Hurricane Milton, Dahl said.
Historically, G4 storms are common during a solar cycle, but G5, or extreme geomagnetic storms such the one that occurred on May 10, are incredibly rare, Dahl said. This new storm has a 25% chance of becoming a G5, he said.
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