More than 200 people are stuck in hospital in Cornwall... despite being fit to leave
The trust has been operating at critical incident level since October
More than 200 people are currently stuck in hospital in Cornwall despite being fit to leave – the equivalent of more than seven whole hospital wards.
The Royal Cornwall Hospitals' NHS Trust (RCHT) remains in a critical incident as it faces continued pressure due to being unable to discharge people from hospital.
Trust chief executive Steve Williamson told a meeting of the trust’s board on Thursday that there was a need to address the number of people awaiting discharge to help ease pressure on the whole health system.
In a report to the board Mr Williamson set out that in September there were 135 patients in hospital beds across RCHT and Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CFT) who were medically fit for discharge.
However by October that had risen to 176 and on February 15th – the most recent date recorded – there were 203 people who were medically fit for discharge stuck in hospital beds.
The majority of the people waiting to be discharged are waiting for residential care home beds or domiciliary packages of care in their own homes.
The board also heard about long waiting lists at the trust, with hundreds of patients waiting over a year for treatment.
In his report Mr Williamson said: "The impact of this level of discharge delays is that more than seven wards of inpatient beds across CFT and RCHT are occupied by patients who don’t require to be in hospital, and this had significant impact on the operation of our Emergency Department and on the ability of SWASFT (Ambulance service) to respond in a timely way to category 1 and category 2 ambulance responses".
He added: "The pressure also impacts on our elective recovery, resulting in reduced capacity to schedule urgent and cancer surgery. The number of people waiting for routine procedures has risen further, as have overall waiting times, although RCHT remains in a better position than many other trusts".
Mr Williamson said that there was a correlation between the number of fit patients awaiting discharge and the waiting times being experienced by ambulances.
He said: "This continues to be an absolute priority for our executive team and we aim to do everything we can with those awaiting discharge so they can get care in the most appropriate place.
"If we achieve that it will help with the challenges with the ambulance service and other departments as well".
The chief executive said that the ongoing pressures were having an impact on staff and he paid tribute to all staff who “continue to work incredibly hard every single day”.
The Trust board heard that RCHT is one of 14 trusts across the country which have been visited by an NHS National Discharge Taskforce Team to look at what can be done to improve the situation.
Mr Williamson said that suggestions had already come forward and that the team would also be visiting colleagues at CFT and at Cornwall Council to see what else can be done across the whole system to ease pressure.
The chief executive said that the trust had now been at critical incident status for 133 days since it was declared in October and he said it was unlikely that that level would be scaled down anytime soon.