Community / High level of delayed discharges ‘compounded’ by care home admissions restriction
THE HIGH level of delayed discharges from hospital has been “compounded” by a care home in Scalloway being unable to take in new admissions following a “weak” inspection report.
A meeting of the NHS Shetland board heard on Tuesday that there are four or five beds in the Walter and Joan Gray care home that would normally be used which are laying empty.
Director of community health and social care Jo Robinson said this comes after a recent Care Inspectorate inspection report of the CrossReach care home, which came back with some ‘weak’ grades.
She also said services in Shetland are in a “really, really hard place” at the moment when it comes to delayed discharges.
Delayed discharges are when people are waiting to move out of hospital wards to more appropriate settings.
They are said to be at their highest level in Shetland in recent years.
There was an average of 10.4 occupied bed days per day in October, which was around 30 per cent of the beds available.
A key reason behind the high rate is said to be challenges with capacity in social care and appropriate accommodation options for people requiring support.
Robinson said generally the “level of dependency and complexity of the people we’re experiencing in the system” at the moment is unlike anything seen before in the past.
The level of dependency that the care homes themselves are reporting now are “levels above” what it has been before, she added – and that also applies for people coming out of hospital.
Regarding the Walter and Joan Gray care home, Robinson said the Care Inspectorate is “saying very clearly to us that they cannot support admissions” to the facility while it is still graded weak.
It was rated as “weak” in three key areas by the Care Inspectorate during a surprise visit in November.
Although communication is ongoing about this, “there are four or five vacant beds in Walter and Joan Gray that we would normally be able to use, so that’s compounding the issue [of delayed discharges]”.
CrossReach, which runs the home for the Church of Scotland, said in January that the safety of those in its care is its “primary concern,” and added that steps had already been taken to address all of the issues noted.
Meanwhile Robinson told the meeting that extra agency staff are being engaged to try to open up four or five beds in a couple of other care homes – Nort Haven in Brae and Wastview in Walls.
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