An elderly woman suffering with pneumonia was left freezing on a ward for days at the new Royal Liverpool Hospital.
The 82-year-old woman was admitted to the new hospital last week after falling ill. Initially she was forced to wait on a trolley in a corridor area of the hospital for two days before she could be admitted to a ward.
Her daughter, who asked for her vulnerable mother not to be identified, said that once transferred to a respiratory ward within the new hospital, her mother said she had been '"freezing" for several days.
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Eventually, the elderly woman's daughter raised the issues with a member of staff who admitted that the hospital was struggling with heating issues and provided a number of blankets for her mum.
She said: "It's been a bit of a nightmare. First she was on the corridor for two days and then when she finally made it to a ward she was freezing, she said there was just no heating at all.
"She doesn't like to complain or cause a fuss but it is obviously not good that a pneumonia patient is lying there really cold. She isn't going to get better if she is breathing in cold air in hospital."
She added: "I spoke to the ward clerk who said the hospital had heating issues on a number of wards and that they were getting engineers out to sort them. I am a big fan of the NHS and the staff members were really good when I spoke to them, but it is concerning and not good enough in a new hospital."
In response, hospital bosses have apologised for the elderly woman's experience and confirmed that while heating issues did occur over the weekend, the situation has now returned to normal.
Dan Grimes, director of operations for the Royal Liverpool University Hospital said: “There was an issue with heating in some parts of the hospital over the weekend and extra blankets were made available for patients if they required them.
"This issue was due to a routine component fault, that has since been repaired and heating has returned to normal. We’d like to apologise for this patient’s experience and encourage them to contact us so that we can look into this matter in more detail.”
The new Royal Liverpool Hospital was finally opened to the public last month after years of delays to the building project. Since its opening, some issues have been reported.
Last month one paramedic described scenes of "carnage" outside the hospital's emergency department as ambulances were held for hours with patients because of a lack of sufficient beds.
According to the ECHO source, ambulance crews are having to continue to treat patients on the ambulances while they wait for beds to free up. The Royal Liverpool Hospital only has space for "four crews to queue inside", meaning queues of ambulances are forced to wait in the hospital car park. The hospital said this was part of a national issue.
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