The joys of socialized medicine: “patient-stacking.”

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.
Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge.
The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls.
Doctors warned last night that the practice of “patient-stacking” was putting patients’ health at risk.
Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show that last year 43,576 patients waited longer than one hour before being let into emergency units.
[…]
Labour brought in the four-hour A&E target to end the scandal of patients waiting for days in casualty or being kept on trolleys in corridors.
But a shortage of out-of-hours GP care, after thousands of doctors opted out of treating patients outside working hours under lucrative new contracts, means more and more are going to casualty units, putting them under greater pressure.

It’s funny how their attempt at a solution just moved the waiting to another area. That’s the problem with bureaucracies, impose deadlines without providing the tools necessary to meet them.
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