Mother ‘paid the price’ for care home’s decision to take patients
A WOMAN whose mother died in a Sheffield nursing home has said she had ‘paid the price’ of a care company’s decision to accept patients from the NHS at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis.
Palms Row Health Care, which operates three nursing homes in the city – Newfield, Westbourne House and Northfield – moved 22 patients out of Newfield in midMarch, with another 22 coming in from hospital at the same time.
However, since then 18 people have died across the three homes, while 60 other patients have tested positive and 30 care home staff have contracted the disease, with at least one spending time in intensive care. One of the 18 deaths the group of homes have suffered involves a resident whose daughter has now spoken out, but prefers to remain nameless as she pursues legal action.
Despite her mother being a permanent resident at Westbourne House, she was never told new patients were being brought in from another home that had seen covid deaths, and the first she heard about it was when ITV broke news of the scandal.
The woman said nursing home staff called her to say her mum had a temperature and was ‘really unwell’ on April 4, and within four days she was dead. “I am sure some people would have rather taken their relatives out of the home to live with them if they had known,” she said.
As well as the legal action being pursued by one of the families, local MP Louise Haigh is looking into the case as are the Care Quality Commission which has submitted a safeguarding complaint on one family’s behalf.
When asked to provide details of how many residents had been transferred from hospital to Palms Row homes during the pandemic and on whose authority this decision was taken, director Nicola Richards refused, citing ‘resident confidentiality’.
Dr David Hughes, medical director at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, said they had been working with Palms Row and other care homes for almost two years to provide a ‘step-down’ facility for patients who no longer needed hospital care but were awaiting a permanent care home placement or some other support before returning home.