You may today have heard of the Conservative Government’s plans to free up some of the beds in NHS hospitals.
They announced plans to spend £500m in renting beds in care homes, to shift people currently in NHS beds who are medically fit, but occupying beds because they are unable to return home.
The theory being, the freed up beds are then used to treat people who are seriously ill.
IW NHS many appeals
Indeed the Isle of Wight NHS has declared a number of ‘Critical Incidents’ due to this and have issued a number of appeals for people to take in any relatives into their homes, the latest being only just before Christmas.
This was even after they had already added as many extra beds as they safely could, turning the Endoscopy Ward into a ten-bed ward to support the Emergency Department.
Just a week before that we’d learnt that almost every bed at hospitals across Hampshire and Isle of Wight was occupied. The appeal before that was only two weeks before.
How many ‘spare’ beds in IW care homes?
In this increasingly desperate situation, clearly something needs to be done.
As ever, the devil is in the detail. The obvious question seems to be, how many ‘spare’ beds are there in IW care homes that could be used? Isle of Wight council responded with admirable speed, with a spokesperson telling News OnTheWight,
“We are in regular contact with providers across the Island, and the number of vacancies as of today is:
Residential care vacancies: 12
Nursing care vacancies: 7
“Whilst this capacity exists, it should be noted it doesn’t necessarily mean that the homes can meet the needs of all the individuals awaiting onward care and rooms need to be suitable to meet, in some cases complex care packages.”
Capacity
That’s clearly the snapshot from today and these things change, so we wondered, how much of the Island’s care home capacity was that?
IWC replied,
“The number of vacancies equates to approximately two per cent of the current spaces available. However, the availability of spaces is constantly changing due to a number of factors, including vacancies available to meet different care needs, plus provider capacity that might change due to staffing levels.”
Image: pandora_6666 under CC BY 2.0
