Care home boss: I was forced to take hospital patient

Paramedics ‘threatened’ manager when she refused to take people discharged without coronavirus test

A CARE home owner has disclosed she was threatened with police action if she refused to take in coronavirus patients who had been discharged from hospital.

Susan Mckinney, who runs 14 care homes across the North East, said that she was given little choice but to comply as the paramedics who arrived at her door became “quite aggressive” when she tried to fight her corner.

Care professionals fear that the sector is on the brink of collapse and have claimed that in recent weeks they have been forced to take in patients who have been discharged from hospital − despite not knowing if they had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Ms Mckinney told BBC Radio 4’s File on Four documentary: “We had an incident on April 10 where twice we rang the hospital, saying, ‘We can’t accept this person back. We need them tested. We need a negative test so we know what we’re dealing with.’”

She claims that paramedics turned up at the home, but refused to accept her decision and would not leave, so there was “a stand-off at the door”.

“Bringing a resident on a stretcher to the door felt like emotional blackmail,” she said. “And all we got was, ‘You’re not following the guidelines.’

“We were threatened with the police if we did not let this person in.”

She said that she felt forced to accept the female resident back into the home, and put her in isolation for 14 days.

Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust, which sent the ambulance, said it could not comment on individual cases but argued that it was following Government guidelines and will continue to deliver a high level of care and support to patients in homes. The case comes after The Daily Telegraph reported last week that another care home boss claimed that he was forced to accept two patients recently discharged from hospital, only one of whom had been tested.

David Crabtree, who manages two care homes in Bingley, W Yorks, said that “without a shadow of a doubt” residents had died from the coronavirus after he reluctantly took the patients in. He claims he was told he would be reported to social services if he objected. Within three days of taking the patients in, both developed a fever and within 10 days, both had died, Mr Crabtree added.

Almost 15,000 care home residents are estimated to have died from the virus.

Prof Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, which represents care home businesses, told MPS on Tuesday that ministers had been preoccupied with protecting the National Health Service and had failed to put care homes on an equal footing.