Service can't cope with troughs in demand, let alone peaks

EDITOR,—David Ryan correctly points out that “moving critically ill patients between hospitals has become a far from ideal way of life.”1 Politicians have only recently taken note of this, but in fact this situation has existed for as long as I have been a consultant (11 years) working in an intensive care unit in a large teaching hospital.

Recent deaths of critically ill patients who were being moved between hospitals …