Temporary wards help tackle winter pressure
Hospitals set to face surge in demand on services
TWO temporary wards are set to open at Leicester’s hospitals in an attempt to deal with winter pressures.
The wards are part of University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust’s (UHL) preparations for demand on services increasing.
There will be one ward at the Glenfield and the other will be at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. Both will have 28 beds.
The Glenfield set up will close in February and the LRI ward will be open until after Christmas.
If there is high enough demand, another temporary ward could be opened up to help ease the pressure on beds.
Sam Leak, director of operational improvement at UHL, said: “The wards will only be temporary due to staff.
“We have a limited number of staff and if we keep spreading them so thinly then the length of stay for patients increases and we don’t want people to be staying longer than they need to. It’s about balance.
“We want to be in a better situation at the end of this month than we were at the end of last March.”
UHL were forced to cancel 1,528 operations in January, February and March this year.
A total of 144 patients were rebooked within 28 days and no one who had an operation cancelled last winter is still waiting now.
The trust performed 31,669 operations during the first three months of the year.
Speaking about last winter’s situtation, strategy director at UHL Mark Wightman said: “The NHS nationally was in crisis, A&Es were bursting at the seams and cancel all operations was what we were told.
“If you needed a hip or knee replacement then you were just going to have to wait four to six weeks because there were people in the back of ambulances.
“It cast a long shadow, it cost us £10 million, it drove a cart and horses through our waiting list but, most importantly, the impact on patients was incalcuable.” The trust did take time to recover but all patients that had operations cancelled have now been treated and no patients had to wait 52 weeks for their treatment.
There were, however, some patients who had operations cancelled more than once.
Sam Leak said: “The highest risk is if we don’t have an intensive care bed, if we don’t have a protective bed, we have to cancel.
“Sometimes we plan for them to come back in and if there isn’t an ITU bed then we have to cancel again.”
Long term, the trust hopes to have a £138 million treatment centre based at the Glenfield Hospital site purely for planned procedures and scheduled operations.
The centre, which would be roughly a third of the size of the existing building, wouldn’t take any emergency patients.
The plan, which forms part of a £367 million bid to transform local health services, is a direct response to system pressures.
Mr Wightman said: “If we had the centre now and and went into the worst-ever winter known to man or beast, operations would not have to be cancelled.”