We didn’t accept hospital admissions – that is why we are Covid-free

The experience of a care home owner in the South West

Our local hospital wanted us to admit patients from mid-March, in order to free up beds, but we didn’t feel comfortable because we didn’t have adequate PPE or testing facilities. We wouldn’t have been able to properly nurse patients suspected of a Covid infection. There was plenty of pressure on us to take patients but we refused. There is a pressure on non-owner operated homes to deliver. In our case, because we own the home and are in control here, we said sorry, we don’t want to.

That is what has made us Covidfree. We have had no Covid infections here at all. It has since transpired that a few of the patients who were discharged and admitted to other homes were actually Covid-positive patients.

The Clinical Commissioning Group’s argument was that we had signed a contract with them to admit patients and that the Government had said we couldn’t refuse to accept any patients who were Covid-free or were asymptomatic of Covid.

We said we were prepared to admit the patients if we had the adequate PPE. I have to take into consideration the welfare of my staff – I couldn’t compel them to nurse patients and not give them adequate protection.

Three different officials called. They were convinced these patients were Covid-free or were now negative, having been positive. But the evidence on how long people remain infectious is still unclear. We didn’t think we were adequately protected to admit them.

From the middle of March, if you discharged any patients to the hospital for non-Covid illnesses, there was a likelihood that they would get it there.

We had one who tested negative for Covid when he arrived at the hospital.

Three days later they called his wife and said he was positive. She was sure he was mixed with patients who already had it and got it in there. He had other conditions, and low immune levels. He sadly passed away.

They have had outbreaks in the homes that did admit patients from the hospital, partly because there was no testing, so they couldn’t tell what they were admitting, and they didn’t have enough PPE. You just need to admit one or two patients with the virus and everybody will get it.

We should have been prepared after what we had seen in Wuhan and Italy, and the World Health Organisation saying to us, “test test test”. That’s where we were caught out. Had we had the requisite PPE we probably would have admitted some patients.

But given what has happened I am just relieved that we didn’t.

I have to take into consideration the welfare of the patients we already have here, and the welfare of my staff.

In the hospital, they’ve got doctors, they’ve got equipment, they’ve got testing facilities, so they can monitor it and arrest the infection. In the social sector you can’t.