Full extent of Covid care home transfers to be made public
The full extent of elderly Scots’ patients release from hospital into care homes after testing positive for Covid 19 is to be made public, health secretary Jeane Freeman has said. Health boards will also be asked to explain the reasons behind the transfers.
It emerged over the weekend that at least 37 such transfers had taken place at the height of the pandemic, after details were obtained through Freedom of Information.
But some of the country’s biggest health boards, including NHS Lothian and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, did not provide details.
Ms Freeman told MSPS yesterday: “We’ve worked to make as much data available as is practical on a range of issues related to Covid 19.
“And that’s why I’ve today asked Public Health Scotland to work with (health) boards to produce validated statistics and analysis on the number of patients who tested positive for Covid 19 and were subsequently admitted to a care home.
“That includes examining how many were assessed as being discharged when they were considered to be infectious and the rationales which were in place for such a discharge, for example in the cases of palliative care concerns.”
Ms Freeman also said she will be calling on NHS chiefs in the other devolved nations to set out whether patients who tested positive had been transferred to care homes elsewhere in the UK.
“Across the United Kingdom we have wrestled with these challenges, as indeed have individuals and our counterparts elsewhere in Europe,” Ms Freeman said.
“I will write today to my colleagues in Wales and Northern Ireland and the UK government, Matt Hancock, setting what I’ve asked Public Health Scotland to do and asking them also to consider initiating a comparable exercise so we can look across the four nations of the UK and learn from that.”
But the health secretary was accused by opponents of seeking to shift the focus of the row onto the doctors involved who authorised individual transfers of patients into care homes.
Tory MSP Graham Simpson said: “The cabinet secretary today has been hiding behind clinicians.
“She’s repeatedly used the phrase clinical judgment she is effectively saying it was down to them.
“If people thought it was OK to send patients into care homes having tested positive that is because of the guidance that was issued.
“Why will she not take responsibility for that?”
But the claims were dismissed by Ms Freeman who insisted it was not for politicians to get involved in clinical matters.
“I am not shielding behind clinicians, I am not using clinicians,” she added.
Labour’s Neil Findlay said the situation was down to “neglect” and branded it a “public health disaster.”
He added: “The reality is they couldn’t get people out of hospital quick enough - couldn’t get them out quick enough.
“And these were people many of them - who had been in hospital for months and months, long-term delayed discharge cases.
“This was not about the best clinical care. It was about clearing the decks.”