John Swinney: I will not normalise corridor care in hospitals

The first minister has pledged to tackle ‘corridor care’ in hospitals following accusations it has become normalised.

John Swinney was responding to Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar at first minister’s questions, following a publication of a report critical of A&E care in Glasgow.

A review conducted by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) concluded emergency departments within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde were under pressure, and patients were being routinely forced to wait on trolleys on corridors.

Sarwar said the report “exposes serious issues” within the health board’s culture, which was causing patient safety to be “compromised”.

In particular, he criticised the management of the health board, where he said staff were “ignored, bullied and silenced, and when they blow the whistle, the management deny their claims, intimidate them, and attempt to cover up”.

He asked: “After years of warnings and hollow claims of lessons learned, why is this SNP government allowing this rotten and at times fatal culture to continue?”

Swinney highlighted that the board was under new leadership since the report was commissioned, though he acknowledged that patient safety would be undermined “if there isn’t a culture of acceptance of the need to tackle the behaviour the Healthcare Improvement Scotland report highlights”.

The first minister added there would not be an inquiry or the review if the government was not prepared to “honestly confront” such issues.

And on the matter about patients being treated in hospital corridors, he said he would not “tolerate” this, adding: “I will not normalise corridor care.”

The HIS report found poor patient flow through emergency departments, a lack of co-ordinated strategy on how to improve that, staff concerns about insufficient management support and an unacceptable normalisation of care in “non-standard bed areas”.

It made 30 recommendations for the health board, plus a number of further ones for national agencies and government.

A statement from the health board in response to the report accepts that patients were “waiting too long”, and these pressures were “difficult for our staff”.

It added: “We take the report, and most importantly the views of our patients and staff, very seriously and want to assure our patients and staff of our commitment to improve.”