MSPs demand answers over discharging
GLASGOW’S health board must reveal if it sent Covid-19 hospital patients back into care homes, MSPs have said. Labour MSPs have called on NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to make clear whether any of the 752 patients who were discharged between March and April this year had tested positive.
It comes after a Sunday Post investigation uncovered 37 people across the country had been sent back into care homes despite being testing positive for Covid-19.
The health board claimed it would be too costly to determine how many of its patients had been tested.
Anas Sarwar MSP said: “It seems clear the lives of so many older people ended prematurely because for a long time we failed to get the virus under control.
“People in Glasgow who have lost loved ones in care homes to this virus deserve to know what went wrong.”
Labour’s Neil Findlay accused the Scottish Government of “clearing the decks” by moving patients from hospitals to care homes when the pandemic struck.
He said: “The reality is we couldn’t get people out of hospital quick enough.
“Many of them who had been in hospital for months and months, long-term delayed discharge cases.
“This was not about the best clinical care – it was about clearing the decks of all those elderly people.”
Freeman responded: “I would never ever be so offensive as to describe clinical decisions as ‘clearing the decks’.”
She told MSPs the guidance on discharge to care homes “has evolved since the start of the pandemic”.
Freeman said decisions on the transfer of patients were made by clinicians and not ministers.
“The Government did not send people to care homes, these are clinical decisions,” the Health Secretary said.
“It is entirely wrong to say the government sent people to care homes. We did not.”
Speaking at yesterday’s briefing, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said there were “lessons to be learned” from the Scottish Government’s handling of the pandemic, but that keeping otherwise healthy patients in hospital “would not necessarily have been the right” thing to do.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “There has never been guidance or policy to actively move patients unwell with Covid-19 into care homes. Guidance has been clear that any individual being placed in a care home must be subject to an appropriate risk assessment and be isolated for 14 days.
“This is to make explicit that steps should be taken to ensure patients are screened clinically so people at risk were not transferred inappropriately.
“As the Health Secretary said in Parliament, we have commissioned Public Health Scotland to develop validated data showing the number of patients who were tested prior to discharge and what the outcome was, which we will publish when it is available.”