Numbers stuck at RUH in care backlog ‘really high’
There is a “really high” backlog of patients waiting to leave Royal United Hospital in Bath.
Cara Charles-barks, chief executive of the RUH, said that the proportion of people waiting longer than seven days to leave hospital has “risen dramatically”.
Speaking on October 7, she also revealed the pressures the emergency department was under as record levels of patients came through the door.
At the moment there are more than 100 patients waiting to go into care in the community settings.
Ms Charles-barks explained that ideally there would be between 40 and 50 patients waiting for care elsewhere and a much quicker turnaround.
She said: “There are challenges from a discharge perspective into social care and that has invariably caused a backlog in the hospital.
“We currently have over 100 people waiting in the hospital to go on to care in the community
“Fifty of those are from the Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES) area, 40 from the Wiltshire catchment area and around 15 from Somerset.
“That does have an impact of course, as whilst people are waiting in hospital to go into care that means that the people who need those beds, either from an elective perspective or an emergency perspective, cannot necessarily access those. We are working very closely with Bath and North East Somerset Council and local leaders to sort that.
“We’re exploring how we can do joint recruitment campaigns with the adult social care team of B&NES as the NHS may be more attractive to some people than social care. But how do we do that in a joinedup way to make sure we have the
Whilst people are waiting in hospital to go into care that means that the people who need those beds, either from an elective perspective or an emergency perspective, can not necessarily access those
Cara Charles-barks, chief executive of the RUH
right staff in the right places to make sure people can be really cared for in the most appropriate environment.
“As you will know hospitals have a very distinct purpose and ideally we want to make sure everyone gets home as quickly as possible and ensure that people don’t have to come into hospital unnecessarily. There is lots of work going on in that area, winter will be tough but we are also working on some longer-term strategies as well.”
She explained that the number of people waiting to go into care has actually come down from a few weeks before.
She said: “It was certainly higher a few weeks ago, it was upwards of 130, but it is sitting really high at the minute. What we would want at any given time is probably 40 to 50 people.
“We recognise there will always be a proportion of people waiting to go into care, the other difference is that the proportion of people who have been waiting for care over seven days has risen dramatically. Probably 50 per cent of those 100 people have been waiting over seven days so of course, that has an impact on bed availability.”
On other matters, Ms Charlesbarks said over September there was a sharp increase in coronavirus patients with the highest number being 46 on September 11.
At the end of September, there were 25 people in hospital with Covid and seven of those were in intensive care.
She went on to explain that the emergency department was also under pressure.
She said: “Demand for our emergency services has been very high so we had our highest day recorded of attendances in September, with 320 people attending the emergency department. Despite this, we have maintained middle of the pack performance in the South West for ‘type one’ attendances to the department.”
Type one attendances are those people who are most sick – they tend to be the people who arrive in an ambulance.
It has meant that A&E wait times can vary with “really long waits” reported. Ms Charles-barks said: “Weekends are particularly busy for us, we have seen really long waits and we know that is really poor for the patients who are needing to come in.
“What we aim to do is make sure we are communicating that as much as possible, what that comes back to is our triage staff in the emergency department will be having conversations with people if they don’t think they need to be there, and they think they can go to a pharmacy or see a GP the following day.”
She continued: “One of our challenges has been staffing but we have been working very hard to ensure that we have got a really robust recruitment campaign, and that we are working with the team to ensure the emergency department here at the RUH is a great place to work.”
She went on to say that the new Sulis Hospital in Bath was helping the RUH cope with added pressure as 70 per cent of the work done there is now NHS.
She added that “winter has always been a real pressure point for many years” but that the new site should help.