Recovery action plan for hospitals

With staff sickness at its lowest since the pandemic began, plans can now be drawn up on how Kent’s hospitals will recover from coronavirus.

During a virtual meeting of the recently merged NHS

Kent and Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), last week the governing body spoke about their hopes the peak of Covid-19 has now passed.

Accountable officer Wilf Williams revealed that staff sickness is at 6% - the lowest its been, and the number of acute hospital beds now being occupied by Covid-19 patients is down to 11% last week from 15% the week before.

Issues around PPE have been managed and are now “more stable” - with settings stocked up with three or more days of supply across all the key items.

Ian Ayres, managing director, said: “We have started to talk with providers about how to restore and recover non-urgent services in a measured and planned way, so hospitals can continue to manage Covid-19 as well as not overburden staff.

“The immediate priority is to restore the services that if we don’t put them back rapidly may risk harming patients, and identify those services where we can take slightly longer to restore them.” Priority will be given to cancer services, mental health and cardiology.

Mike von Fraunhofer highlighted the need for people living with dementia to also be considered, stating around 100 people are still waiting for dementia assessments, which are not currently operating. Mr Williams said: “There will almost certainly be a backlog of harm that we will need to pick up as part of our recovery plan.”

But many services are still operating and GPs are keen to emphasise they are still open for business, in light of the drop in cancer referrals because patients are not coming forward.

Dr Katie Collier said “We’ve talked a lot about cancer demand being down and as a GP I’ve noticed we get a lot of people apologising saying, ‘I know you’re very busy doctor but I need to talk to you about this.’”

A national campaign to promote the fact services are still running is imminent.