Hospital kit fails amid record demand in heatwave

Extreme heat and humidity caused hospital kit to fail amid record demand, a hospital boss has said.

Kevin McNamara, chief executive of Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said Gloucestershire Royal Hospital saw its busiest days over the latest heatwaves.

At the county council's health overview and scrutiny committee meeting on Tuesday, McNamara also said diagnostic kit had failed due to the temperatures and humidity - with just one MRI device out of four working across Cheltenham General and Gloucestershire Royal hospitals in the most recent spell of hot weather.

"Given climate change and everything else, we're going to have to adapt," he said.

McNamara said climate change and rising temperatures were changing the way the trust conducts its system-wide seasonal preparation in the health service, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

For hospitals, McNamara said, this meant planning for the pressure of extreme heat from January - with staff seeing "far greater" pressures in the summer than in the traditional busy winter period.

Three heatwaves have hit the UK in the last two months, with temperatures of more than 35C (95F) recorded in May, June and July, according to the Met Office.

"[During] the heatwave at the end of June, we had not just temperature issues which started to impact our kit and staff, but also significant humidity issues," McNamara said.

"So, what that meant was throwing some kit and diagnostic equipment out of operability."

McNamara said people "lots of people" had been brought in to try and remedy the issues, with hospitals prioritising emergency patients.

"What was interesting is that even hospitals that have a much newer estate than we do were experiencing the same kit issues," he said.

"For us we also have the added complexity; we have a very fragile estate which means air handling units go down, leaking roofs etc that we have to manage, and that can throw rooms out which then obviously creates a delay."

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