THE NHS in England will struggle this winter without more beds in care homes and other community settings to ease hospital pressures, Nuffield Trust researchers warn in a report published yesterday.
On Wednesday, councils and care providers warned that government funding cuts are causing a serious crisis threatening the existence of social care provision. The Nuffield Trust said that last winter a small proportion of patients, just 3.6%, had taken up more than a third of hospital beds.
The research group said help targeted at this group, most of them frail and elderly, could have a big impact. The warning comes as NHS England prepares to publish performance data for October. The Nuffield Trust analysis includes a review of how hospitals responded to last winter.
It found hospitals had spent more than £250m of their emergency £700m pot on opening up extra beds to cope with demand. But it said despite the investment, a small number of patients had been responsible for using up a third of the bed capacity over the winter months.
This was because they spent long periods in hospital or were readmitted on a regular basis. The analysis highlighted the squeeze on council budgets that had caused them to ration care services, which are seen as vital for keeping people out of hospital and making sure they can be discharged safely when they are admitted.
The Nuffield Trust report said investing in intermediate care beds could provide a solution, allowing hospitals to discharge the frailest patients into a safe environment until they have recovered or until care packages could be arranged in their own home, or permanent places found in care homes.
This has been done in Glasgow, where the local council and NHS have worked together over the past year to ensure care home beds have been freed up for hospital patients to move into temporarily. Nuffield Trust chief executive Nigel Edwards predicted that this winter hospitals were going to find it ‘even more difficult to cope’ unless the health service invested in intermediate care beds to get patients out of hospital.
