BMA industrial action

The BMA have announced that a day of industrial action will take place on the 21^st June in response to changes in the NHS pension scheme. It has been announced that emergency and urgent care will not be affected, but is this genuinely the case? On the day of the industrial action, assuming routine elective cases are not admitted to inpatient beds, it is possible that access to such beds for patients requiring admission from the emergency department might actually improve. There may be a positive effect upon flow through the ED with reduced crowding and decreased lengths of stay in the ED for admitted patients. However, it is likely that there will be delays in the care patients already in hospital will receive. This could affect non-urgent radiological investigations or may simply mean no routine ward rounds to determine that a patient is fit to be discharged from hospital. This may result in increased bed occupancy in the days following the industrial action and this in turn may then result in delays in admission from the ED. The lost productivity in elective work will need to be regained at some point although this is likely to be spread over a longer period of time and the effect upon ED performance may not be noticeable.

It will be interesting to see exactly what the effect on ED performance is.

BMA website