NHS to rent spare bedrooms

THE NHS is piloting an Airbnb-style scheme which will see families with spare rooms paid to put up patients in a bid to tackle its bed blocking crisis.

Under the scheme, hosts will be paid up to £1,000 a month to look after patients recuperating after surgery.

Trusts and councils in Essex are working with Carerooms, a private start-up company, to invite residents to offer rooms to patients who are on their own and need to convalesce.

The company said it will transform spare rooms into “secure care spaces for patients who are waiting to be discharged”. Dr Harry Thirkettle, the firm’s chief medical officer, said up to 30 patients would be involved in the three-month pilot and placed in around 10 homes.

“What we’re aiming towards is patients who need short-term accommodating either before going home or going into long-term care,” he said.

“They would come to us because they either live alone and don’t have support or they have mobility issues.”

Prospective hosts will need to go through security checks before they are approved for the scheme.

THE NHS is piloting an Airbnb-style scheme in which home owners will be paid £1,000 a month to “host” patients in their spare rooms in a bid to combat bed blocking.

Trusts and councils in Essex are working with Carerooms, a start-up company, to connect members of the public with patients who have had a minor procedure – such as a knee operation – but who live alone or have no family to help them convalesce.

In return for a payment of up to £50 a night, hosts are asked to “welcome the patient, cook three microwave meals a day and offer conversation”, the Health Service Journal (HSJ) said. They will not provide care.

Carerooms says the model provides “a safe, comfortable place for people to recuperate from hospital” as well as helping to alleviate bed blocking, which has risen by 40 per cent in the past year and is estimated to contribute to 8,000 deaths annually.

On some days, 6,000 patients are taking up beds across the NHS when they no longer require hospital treatment. However, the Save Southend A&E campaign group, which started up earlier this year to fight a proposed closure, said it was concerned that the company had been handing out fliers in Southend Hospital. “We are shocked that an NHS trust is endorsing such a company,” said a spokesman.

“Offering beds in private residential homes opens a huge can of worms for safeguarding, governance and possible financial and emotional abuse of people at their most vulnerable time. It is almost weekly that there are reports of abuse and poor care in registered care homes, therefore the monitoring of such ‘placements’ in private homes would be a huge and risky task.”

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services also said it raised questions about the well-being and safety of patients and the Care Quality Commission said it would contact the company to see if any part of the service fell under the “scope of regulation”.

Although Carerooms promises to undertake an initial vetting and interview procedure, the company states that no previous care experience is needed. Hosts do have the option of attending training to become a carer for their patient if they are “interested in increasing your skills and income”.

The company said the model was comparable to Airbnb – the website that helps people rent out their spare rooms to strangers – and said the pilot would focus on patients who were “medically fit for discharge but that had no one to go home to”.

Hosts will be subject to Disclosure and Barring Service checks and must complete training to ensure understanding of the Mental Capacity Act, food hygiene and cleanliness standards. Harry Thirkettle, Carerooms medical director and a part-time emergency registrar in Essex, told the HSJ: “Everyone’s immediate concern is ... safeguarding. We are working hard to be better than standard practice.

“We are not going off half-cocked… We are not going to start taking on patients until we have satisfied all these different organisations’ governance procedures and committees.”

Yvonne Blücher, Southend Hospital managing director, said Carerooms was one of several “innovative solutions” being explored in Essex.