Creating the hospital of the future: Enabling the vision

摘要

There is much good in our hospital system, but there are also major failings, as revealed in the Mid Staffordshire Francis report and other patient safety reports. In recent months, we have seen in the media harrowing accounts of care failures in hospitals. All is not well in NHS hospitals. The causes of the strains and failures in hospital care have been well documented and are also covered in the report by the Future Hospital Commission (2013).Our hospitals, the report states, are struggling to cope with the challenge of an ageing population and increasing hospital admissions. All too often, according to the report, our most vulnerable-those who are old, frail or have dementia-are failed by a system that is ill-equipped and seemingly unwilling to meet their needs. Hospitals also show a systematic failure to deliver coordinated patient-centered care, with patients forced to move between beds, teams and care settings with little communication or information sharing. The report states that services struggle to deliver high-quality services across 7 days, particularly at weekends. A looming crisis in the medical workforce is noted, with consultants and registrars under increasing pressure, and difficulties in recruitment to posts and training schemes that involve general medicine