Hospital issues ‘full capacity’ alert days before move to smaller building

A major acute site has issued a ‘full capacity’ alert to staff, just days before the services are due to move into a replacement hospital with fewer beds.

In an email seen by HSJ, medical leaders at the Royal Liverpool Hospital alerted staff to extreme pressures on the site, with ambulances being held outside and “no space” in resuscitation areas.

The RLH currently has around 685 beds, but at the end of this month the services are due to start transferring to the long-awaited new Royal Liverpool, on an adjacent site.

The new hospital has 640 beds, and several frontline staff have told HSJ this is causing significant concern, with the current services under so much pressure.

One senior source at the trust said there has been a push since 2017 to reduce inpatients beds at the current hospital, to try and match the capacity of the new build, but this hasn’t been achieved.

They added: “Surgeons are concerned that their beds will get filled with medical outliers. The whole issue is all the patients who are waiting for social care. It was supposed to have been sorted by now.”

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Source: HSJ, 13 September 2022