Transitional care freeing up hospital beds
HEALTH and Wellness MEC Nomafrench Mbombo visited the Mitchells Plain Transitional Care Facility for an oversight visit yesterday.
The 148-bed facility, located in Highlands Drive, is operated by nonprofit organisation Aquarius. It caters for medically stable patients unable to be discharged but do not require acute care.
Contracted by the department, the facility allows patients to fully recuperate without congesting the healthcare system.
Mbombo said that the transitional care facility forms part of the service redesign initiated after the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Those patients needing palliative care, those who might have cancer, strokes, they are still not ready (to be discharged).
“There are also patients who have serious wounds specifically, for example, the diabetic patients who might have had amputations. They still need to look at that wound but they don’t need to occupy beds at the hospital.
“So that would benefit in that the beds become empty at the hospital for another patient who might need to have more of a medical intervention.”
Mbombo said that the department had invested about R420 000 in the facility.
“In this facility, it’s mostly nursing care, physio, occupational (therapy) – it’s a multidisciplinary team but there is no high-level specialist intervention required,” Mbombo said.
“So they could be a step-up facility, meaning that the patients could be referred at the community health centre level primary care, to be sent here, or it could be a step down, where you could be discharged from the main specialist hospital to be here to recuperate,” Mbombo said.
Fatima Peters, CEO of Western
Cape Rehabilitation Centre and Advanced Transitional Care Services at Brackengate Intermediate Care Facility, said the facility was a sister facility to Brackengate.
Patients stay from six to eight weeks, although many patients have stayed for two to four weeks, Peters said.
“If they’re coming just for convalescent care, to recover, sometimes it’s your end-of-life palliative care, which is not always that long, but it’s important to offer the family that support and dignified death but the maximum is eight weeks.
“If you’re not recovered by eight weeks then there might be something more complex and you’ll require a different type of service. Or sometimes, based on the clients needs, we do allow deviations but it’s uncommon. That’s why we came up with that time frame because it actually takes between six to eight weeks for a client to be rehabilitated and be able to go home.”