NHS hospitals are running low on oxygen as more patients are treated in corridors and ambulances

Oxygen supplies are dangerously low due to the ongoing NHS crisis, doctors have warned.

The £150 billion a year healthcare system is under enormous pressure from Covid, flu and bed blockers, as well as the usual winter pressures and staff absences.

Due to space limitations, sick Britons had to be treated in hospitals outside the wards, including in ambulances, corridors, closets and hospital offices.

This means that more respiratory patients than ever rely on portable oxygen cylinders, which only hold gas for about 30 minutes before being strapped to a bed.

Private hospitals ‘can help us heal the NHS’… and Rishi Sunak promises new surgery centers to cut waiting lists, with money to free up beds under new plan

Rishi Sunak smiles as he arrives to deliver a speech on his ‘five promises’ to the NHS on Wednesday

In comparison, oxygen is delivered directly to the hospital beds through a series of tubes.

Woking-based BOC, the NHS’s main supplier of cylinder oxygen, has announced it will ration five types of portable oxygen.

It just gives containers to hospitals in exchange for empty ones.

BOC said: “Integral valve cylinders (CD, ZA, ZD, HX and ZX) are currently only supplied full before empty.

“This means we can only supply the same number of cylinders as you return and any orders for more cylinders than returned will be adjusted accordingly.”

However, the company insisted there was no shortage of oxygen, just an increasing demand for its tiny bottles.

BOC said it was working with the NHS and the Department of Health to encourage hospitals to use their oxygen supplies via tubes or larger containers.

The NHS said it was seeing “significant demand” for portable oxygen due to an increase in patients with respiratory conditions. It encouraged sick Britons to continue using the NHS as normal.

Healthcare sources told The Telegraph that supply only met about half the demand for jerry cans from hospitals and ambulances.

Doctors told the newspaper the situation puts patients “at risk” as they are forced to ration oxygen or use “inferior alternatives”.

Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust announced this week that medics had to stop treating patients in corridors due to a shortage of portable oxygen.

A message to staff warned there were only “hours” of supply left and urged staff to move patients to wards to ensure they had access to oxygen.

The East of England Ambulance Service Trust, South East Coast Ambulance and East of England have instructed staff to carefully manage deliveries due to high demand.

East of England also suggested that some elderly patients with oxygen saturations between 92 and 94 percent do not need oxygen unless their levels are below normal, she added.

A South West NHS worker told the Sunday Times: “We are now at a stage where there is not enough bottled oxygen to treat patients in corridors, ambulances and in our walk-in area of ​​the emergency room.”

The Doctors Association UK said supply problems – which were unusual even in the darkest days of the pandemic – were now “common”.

Oxygen requirements, strict since Christmas, warn some hospitals are higher than during the first Covid wave – said to be among the worst for hospitals.

Dr Matt Kneale, co-chairman of the organisation, told The Telegraph: “We heard from several doctors in different regions about oxygen deprivation.”

The situation forced medical professionals to “throw” patients out of the beds into the corridors as more and more sick patients needed the same.

“We did it today so that a patient could die somewhere other than in a corridor,” she said.

Dr Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the paper: “This is about people being treated in inappropriate places, trapped in corridors and in the back of ambulances.

“There is no problem with pipes, patients must be treated here.

“This is another example of our failure to get people the care they need.”

Dr Boyle warned that up to 500 patients die every week because of the current delays in the emergency room.

In other health news…

Britain’s broken NHS: Weeping grandmother begs family to let her die after 33-hour wait for trolley and man who ‘slept on the floor after spending the day in an ambulance’ as trust bosses think, to keep patients in tents to treat to avoid anger to deal with the situation

A vaccination once a month can relieve the pain of arthritic knees: more than 600 people with knee arthritis take part in clinical trials with the drug

NHS adjusts diversity and inclusion targets: Trusts urged to drop target to raise BAME inequality ratio in Wakery raids