Bed blocking crisis looms if care home spaces not found

Published on Wednesday 27 July 2011 18:52

THERE are warnings that the Lothians will face a winter bed blocking crisis if the 560 residents of doomed Southern Cross care homes do not find accommodation by November.

The struggling firm announced it was to shut down all its UK homes by the end of the year, and eight of those are in the area.

NHS and local authority bosses are desperately trying to find a solution to keep the facilities running but, if that fails, hospitals will have to be on stand-by to provide temporary accommodation.

The impact of the recent closure of the Elsie Inglis care home in Abbeyhill is still being felt in both delayed discharge and accident and emergency waiting times figures.

Around 30 residents of Elsie Inglis had to be accommodated by NHS Lothian facilities, with bosses warning that the impact of hundreds more would be devastating.

The health board's acting director of strategic planning and modernisation, Alan McMahonk, said: "We just can't take that as a health board when you see what happened with 30 extra patients in the system after the Elsie Inglis closure.

"We can't wait to see what will happen with these homes, we have to act now and assume a worst case scenario."

The Evening News reported earlier this week that multi- millionaire Robert Kilgour, who already operates three nursing homes in the area, is set to take over one of the Edinburgh homes.

It is understood several of the eight Lothians care homes operated by Southern Cross are owned by the same landlord.

This should make negotiations easier, and health chiefs said the homes themselves should represent viable businesses.

But the negative publicity surrounding Southern Cross has already led families to turn down those homes as a potential destination for their loved ones, meaning more people are bed blocking - a term used when a patient is fit to leave hospital but has nowhere else to go.

In June, there were 140 such individuals, the highest in 12 months and undoing months of hard work by health bosses and local authorities.

A failure to hit the target of seeing 98 per cent of accident and emergency patients within four hours - albeit narrowly - was also blamed on the lack of beds, clogging the system and "causing problems at the front door".

Peter Gabbitas, joint director of health and social care for Edinburgh, said: "The closure of the Elsie Inglis care home did create an additional pressure on the availability of care home space during May and June.

"We don't want to see patients kept in hospital unnecessarily once their care is completed and NHS Lothian and the city council continue to work closely together to ensure appropriate and timely discharge for all patients.

"Our record on delayed discharges is one of real success which has been sustained over a long period of time."