‘TAKE YOUR ELDERLY HOME TO FREE BEDS’
Now NHS chiefs urge relatives to help them ease crisis on the wards
FAMILIES are being asked to look after elderly patients at home to free-up hospital beds.
Managers urged relatives to help ensure patients are discharged quickly, including collecting them and becoming familiar with their medication.
The advice was issued at three hospital trusts in what has been described as the NHS’s worst winter crisis since the 1990s.
On Tuesday, hospitals were told to cancel up to 55,000 non-urgent operations to free beds and frontline staff amid a rise in flu cases. Yesterday:
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt apologised to the thousands of patients whose operations will be cancelled;
A& E doctors warned of severe risks to patient safety as at least 16 hospital trusts said they were on the highest alert;
Labour and trade unions were accused of politicising the crisis, as Tories insisted it was a ‘long-term’ issue.
Doctors say the conditions in A&E are the worst they have seen and patients are being treated in corridors due to a bed shortage.
The first week in January is normally very busy for hospitals, but this year many more patients are succumbing to severe chest infections and flu. Official figures today are expected to confirm there has been a surge in flu cases as well as an increase in A&E waiting times.
But the pressures are likely to intensify later this week, with the return of freezing temperatures predicted across the UK.
Experts are particularly worried about an aggressive flu strain, H3N2 – responsible for Australia’s worst flu epidemic in 50 years.
The main reason A&E units are overcrowded is because hospital wards are extremely full, so anyone arriving to A&E who needs to be admitted must wait for hours on a trolley until a bed is free.
Many of the patients occupying hospital beds are elderly and medically well enough to go home. But doctors cannot discharge them due to a lack of social care.
Managers at Northampton General Hospital, Bedford Hospital and Western Sussex Hospitals have urged relatives to do what they can to help patients go home as quickly as possible.
The alerts over the past two days were endorsed by NHS England. A spokesman said relatives could give patients a lift home, making a bed available up to four hours earlier than if they were sent home on hospital transport or in a taxi.
The NHS England spokesman encouraged relatives to speak to their loved one’s doctor and familiarise themselves with all the patient’s medication. Bedford Hospital put an ‘ urgent public notice’ on its website yesterday that it was ‘extremely busy’.
It added: ‘We ask that relatives support us and their loved ones by helping us discharge patients that are medically well … to return to the most appropriate environment such as their own home or a community care home.’ A spokesman urged relatives to ‘give up their time’ to cook meals and visit.
Western Sussex Hospitals sent out a reminder on Monday having begun a campaign last month asking families to help get patients out of hospital. A spokesman said relatives could help by allowing them to move in to spare rooms.
Age UK’s Caroline Abrahams warned this was ‘no substitute for the social care service that many older people require’.
Yesterday 16 hospital trusts said they were on the highest alert, meaning patient safety is at risk and managers are turning to contingency plans such as drafting in extra staff and diverting ambulances. The total number is likely to be higher as many refused to confirm their status.
Dr Adrian Harrop, a senior A&E doctor at Scarborough and York hospitals, said patients were waiting for a ‘full day’, adding: ‘That’s the worst I’ve seen.’
Jackie Weaver said her elderly father, who has dementia, was made to languish on a trolley for 36 hours at the Royal Stoke Hospital.
Jeremy Hunt said: ‘If you are someone whose operation has been delayed I don’t belittle that … I apologise to everyone who that has happened to.’
‘No substitute for social care’