NHS hospitals are getting rid of hotel patients to reduce demand for hospital beds.
At least three NHS foundations in the south west of England use “nursing hotels” to transport patients who no longer need urgent care but need social assistance to make beds available for incoming patients.
Discharged patients have to wait in hotels for an average of about a month before they receive the care they need at home or find shelter in a nursing home.
Age UK told me that this strategy “highlights how serious the welfare crisis has become.”
Hospitals across England are thought to be taking between 100 and 200 patients in bed despite being willing to leave due to lack of a social package.
In Devon, the NHS has booked rooms for 40 patients at the Leonardo Hotel in Plymouth.
NHS Devon initially booked 30 beds at the hotel, but after an agreement with its Cornish counterpart, increased the booking by ten to accommodate patients from outside the county.
A spokeswoman for NHS Devon said: “Care hotels are just one of many positive steps health and care partners have taken to ease the strain on busy health services this winter.
“They do not include hospitalized patients and are intended to provide social assistance to people who are healthy and do not require hospitalization, but need additional housing support after hospitalization or avoid hospitalization.”
In addition to sharing the Plymouth Hospital with NHS Devon, the NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board (CIOS ICB) is in talks to establish its own facility.
At Cornwall’s only major hospital in Truro, patient wait times are up to 12 hours. The province’s healthcare and care system is operating at critical incident levels after “acute pressure” has aggravated our “operational level”, according to health officials.
Care hotels in Cornwall and Devon, run by private healthcare providers, are expected to be operational by the end of March.
NHS hospitals in and around Bristol have also booked hotel stays for up to 30 patients through the end of March.
A spokesman for the Integrated Care Council for Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire said: “Local health and care services are under a lot of pressure and this temporary care facility, provided at a local hotel, will help us manage the flow of patients through our hospitals to improve by enabling discharges of more people after they are able to leave the hospital for health reasons.
“No one should stay in the hospital longer than necessary, and this facility will allow more people to be discharged quickly. It will also improve the flow of patients in our hospitals and help eliminate delays in the transfer of ambulances.”
The Bristol Hotel is run by a private patient care company, Abicare.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, regional NHS organizations have awarded Abicare a contract to operate 20 medical hotels.
While other NHS funds in the UK are considering similar moves, it is clear that the higher proportion of older residents in the South West has led to a particularly severe shortage of social assistance.
According to Age UK, an “extra bed in the NHS” costs around £2,500 a week. A nursing home costs just under £1,000 per resident per week, while a nursing home costs around £520 per week.
Last summer, Care England criticized the Abicare Hotel in Norfolk for costing taxpayers £15,555 per care recipient during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In early 2022, Norfolk and the Waveney Clinical Commissioning Team launched a three-month pilot project to ease pressure on local NHS hospitals.
He sent 36 patients to a nursing home for an average of 16 weeks each, which Care England says represents an “incredible mismanagement” of £500,000 of public funds and “completely unacceptable”.
In response, Abicare said it was a “significant cost savings” for the NHS.
Anne-Marie Perry, chief executive of Abicare, said: “Containing the 36 patients who occupied one of our hospital hotels over the same time period would have cost the NHS £1.6 million, or £44,800 per patient. At the time, the cost of £15,555 per inhabitant was not only a significant cost saving, but also freed up 36 hospital beds and hospital staff to care for other patients.”
Minutes from the NHS Devon board show that total support and interventions to help people with complex dementia by the end of March amounted to £9.85m.
Caroline Abrahams, director of charity Age UK, said: “The fact that this directive is being discussed at all highlights how serious the social crisis has become.
“Hotels are not the right place to provide quality care to older people who need help recovering from hospitalization.
“When the only other option is to leave someone in the hospital, it may be the lesser of two evils, but it is a sad indictment of the progressive refusal to invest in a stable, functioning welfare system that can provide the care you need. right”. Time.
“If we want to solve the problem of hospital discharges once and for all, we need reforms, not band-aids.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak laid out his five pledges according to which he says his position as prime minister should be judged, acknowledging pressure on the National Health Service after its spokesman was criticized at a briefing on Tuesday for the system health care is not adapting to the crisis.
Mr Sunak said: “I know there are problems in the emergency room. People are understandably worried when they see queues of ambulances outside hospitals.”
The prime minister also promised to increase hospital beds and welfare funds to help patients ready to leave the country.
NHS England has been contacted for comment.
Source: I News
I’m Raymond Molina, a professional writer and journalist with over 5 years of experience in the media industry. I currently work for 24 News Reporters, where I write for the health section of their news website. In my role, I am responsible for researching and writing stories on current health trends and issues. My articles are often seen as thought-provoking pieces that provide valuable insight into the state of society’s wellbeing.