Western Daily Press (Saturday)
MP says bed-blocked patients deserve better
THE MP for South West Wiltshire has spoken about the “bewildering freneticism, noise and clamour” of his motherin-law’s final days, as he called on the Government to tackle bed blocking.
Conservative MP Dr Andrew Murrison shared the story of his “good and gentle” mother-in-law’s death in hospital, saying she and other patients in inappropriate beds “deserved better”.
Among the steps the South West Wiltshire MP called for was for people “entering their final days” to be prioritised for care in the more “homely” setting of a community hospital bed.
Dr Murrison, who went to the University of Bristol’s medical school and was a Surgeon Commander in the Royal Navy, told the Commons: “In November, my mother-in-law died in Salisbury’s renowned spinal unit.
“But Selma did not have a spinal problem. She did have the general frailty and multiple co-morbidities of advanced old age.
“Her management overall was good in parts. But modern district general hospitals are not configured for long-term care of the elderly or terminal care.
“So a good and gentle person spent her final days in acute medicine’s bewildering freneticism, noise and clamour. It was very far from ideal.
“She deserved much better. I have seen much better, notably in community hospitals and intermediate care.
“An acute hospital is no place for an elderly person no longer receiving active medical management.
“I would go further and say that our frantically busy acute units operating
in the white heat of high-tech, cutting-edge medicine can be unsafe for them.”
Dr Murrison said there were an average of 5,370 people per day who were bed blocking as of February 2020.
He added that the picture of the “costly” problem since then was unknown because data collection had been suspended during the pandemic.
He told MPs his Healthcare (Delayed Discharges) Bill, which he named Selma’s Bill after his motherin-law, would carry “a special category of asterisk delayed discharge for those judged by lead clinicians to be entering their final days”.
“This category reported as a subset will be subject to fast tracking to speed the transfer of the most vulnerable from inappropriate acute settings to more appropriate homely settings in the community,” said Dr Murrison.
Other measures in the Bill, introduced as a 10-minute rule motion, would include requiring lead hospital clinicians to “certify daily which of their patients are fit for discharge”.
The Bill also seeks to establish delayed discharge as a “patient safety issue” which could be investigated by a proposed Health Services Safety Investigation Branch.