London’s Emergency Coronavirus Hospital Becomes ‘A White Elephant’

London’s new 4,000-bed hospital purpose built to treat coronavirus infections has been forced to turn dozens of patients away as there are not enough nurses to treat them, prompting concerns that the establishment is becoming a “white elephant”, the Guardian first reported.

KEY FACTS

NHS Nightingale was built in nine days, and saw London’s biggest conference centre, the ExCel, converted into a hospital accommodating 4,000 beds, including nearly 3,000 intensive care beds.

But with a lack of staff, particularly critical care nurse, some 50 patients needing critical care have been turned away from the east London hospital, while transfers of patients on ventilators from hospitals across London have been cancelled, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

The hospital is staffed by National Health Service workers usually based in hospitals across London. The NHS careers page has closed applications to work at London’s Nightingale, due to a “high volume” of applications.

As of Monday, NHS Nightingale, which welcomed its first patient on April 7 following a virtual opening by Prince Charles, has treated 41 patients—about 1% of the hospital’s capacity.

The hospital’s underuse is raising concerns about whether resources were best placed in the project, The Guardian found.

Crucial comment: An unnamed senior official at a London hospital trust told The Guardian: “It’s a white elephant. When it was conceived a month ago we were facing the prospect of hospitals in London being overrun and mass burial sites like in New York.
“We thought that London would be Italy and there would be more patients needing level 3 intensive care treatment by this stage.”
The official added that London hospitals expanded the capacity of their intensive care units, whereas the number of ICU patients in the capital hasn’t increased at the rate that was expected, meaning the Nightingale facilities are not as needed as was initially anticipated.
Key background: Temporary hospitals have been built in other major cities and towns in the U.K., including in Manchester, Birmingham, Harrogate and Glasgow. The facilities are intended as backup, the NHS said, in anticipation of a wave of coronavirus cases, and to ease pressure on existing intensive care units. Over the weekend, NHS Chief Executive Simon Stevens praised the staff working at London’s Nightingale, and addressed the spare capacity.
He said: “We have not yet had to make extensive use of the Nightingale London thanks to the hard work of NHS staff – who have freed up more than 30,000 existing hospital beds – and the public, who have played their part by staying at home and saving lives.
“It will count as a huge success for the whole country if we never need to use them but with further waves of coronavirus possible it is important that we have these extra facilities in place and treating patients.”
Tangent: The U.K. government has come under fire for its slow response to companies answering a call to supply millions of pieces of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for NHS staff. The government has also been accused of picking out brand names to produce gowns, facemasks and other PPE designed to keep health workers safe, despite lesser-known textile firms that are ready to supply the key equipment, but have not heard back from the government.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/isabeltogoh/2020/04/22/report-patients-turned-away-as-londons-emergency-coronavirus-hospital-becomes-a-white-elephant/#47b735ae3ecc