Trust admits staff shortages causing inappropriate discharges

A trust has admitted it is having to discharge patients inappropriately into care homes or community hospital beds because of a shortage of home care workers.

A report to East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust’s board last week revealed that 160 extra beds had been commissioned to maintain flow across the local health economy “due to insufficient domiciliary/care package capacity.”

It went on: “The clinical commissioning group have tried via Kent County Council to commission additional domiciliary care without success. It is acknowledged by the local health economy that it is important to withdraw from these additional beds as quickly as possible as they are not a cost-effective resource and more importantly, in many cases, they are not the ideal discharge destination for those patients who could have been discharged home with a care package.

“Patients are being transferred into community hospital beds or residential home beds due to a lack of domiciliary care packages. Although this is a national issue, it will not be resolved locally until appropriate pathway capacity is commissioned.”

Professor Adam Gordon, president elect of the British Geriatrics Society, said: “If people have been sent to a care home when they don’t want or need to be there that can affect their motivation and result in a form of deconditioning. One of the principles of effective rehabilitation in older people is that if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

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Source: HSJ, 17 March 2022