Surgeons unveil care ‘village’ to ease bed-blocking
Planned £250m facility would help the NHS by taking on patients recovering from surgery
REHABILITATION “villages” where patients go to recover from surgery and illness can solve the NHS bed-blocking crisis, leading surgeons have said as they revealed plans for the first centre. Stephen Westaby and Richard Kerr are leading a bid for a £250million facility in the Cotswolds, to relieve bed space in hospitals across the region.
The eminent heart and brain surgeons intend the 50-acre site to be devoted to activity-based rehabilitation and cutting-edge regenerative medicine for patients who currently languish in acute general hospitals.
It would create the model for a network of out-of-town rehabilitation villages for people recovering from operations, in turn freeing up beds for critically ill patients currently turned away from surgery due to lack of space.
Prof Westaby said that, while 25 years ago patients who had undergone serious heart surgery were often discharged within five days, current pressures meant frequently they took more than 10.
Meanwhile, lack of rehabilitative services mean those who have suffered cardiac arrest with brain damage are often “stuck indefinitely”.
Nearly 350,000 patients spend at least three weeks stuck on a ward each
Alfresco artistes
year. They take up one fifth of all beds – the equivalent of 36 hospitals.
Prof Westaby said: “Prolonged treatment in a hospital ward can never be the answer. Post-surgical patients or those suffering serious injury, stroke or heart attacks lose 10 per cent of their muscle mass after 10 days recumbency.
“Whilst strenuous efforts have been made to rehabilitate injured military personnel in specialist centres, there is scant provision for the general public – we intend to change that.”
He added the situation required “in- novation, a new approach, not just more money thrown at it”. His comments follow an intervention earlier this month by Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, calling on hospital bosses to end the “long stay” culture on hospital wards and send thousands of patients home sooner.
As with plans for the 80-bed Oxford Centre for Rehabilitative and Regenerative Medicine, the centres would be privately financed and then commissioned by NHS bosses, involving local universities and the Armed Forces. The strategy is understood to have received the backing of senior executives within NHS Improvement, which oversees hospitals, and US regenerative stem cell pioneers.
Last month Prof Keith Willett, NHS England’s director of acute care, said hospitals were guilty of a “ridiculous waste of resources” and could improve care with better use of technology.
Prof Westaby said: “Rehabilitation no longer consists of a gentle walk around the grounds of the community hospital followed by Scrabble in the evening.”