Shropshire Star

Shropshire bed-swap plans will help hospital shortage

Changes are being made to wards at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital to help alleviate the pressure caused by increased A&E admissions, medics have revealed.

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Bosses at the Shrewsbury hospital on Mytton Oak Road today said they were reallocating some beds to "ease pressure on the system".

The changes are due to take place next week. Meanwhile two 'escalation wards' set up at both the RSH and PRH over the winter have now been made permanent. Escalation wards are opened to provide extra capacity during busy times.

It comes following a report by chief executive Peter Herring that said the trust was facing a "deficit' in available bed capacity "with an "average gap" of 70 beds.

Earlier this month, a 'major incident' was declared at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital after it experienced exceptionally high demand from patients in need of emergency care on a single day.

Planned operations and outpatients appointments were cancelled as well as the majority of clinics as staff were redeployed to deal with A&E admissions.

Debbie Kadum, chief operating officer at the Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, said the changes to wards at the RSH would help tackle the challenges around capacity. It is also hoped that patients can be moved through the hospital and back home quicker and more efficiently.

She said: "This will help us to both improve the flow of patients through our hospitals, and equally as important, make sure those patients in our hospitals are being cared for in the right place.

"A big part of this involved making changes to the way we use our wards.

"In a nutshell, we need to reallocate some of our beds to match the demand we have for the different types of medical and surgical patients we are providing care for."

By making the changes, bosses at the hospitals aim to make sure patients are placed on an appropriate ward more quickly and avoid having to cancel operations.

It is also hoped the changes, which will come into effect next Friday, will reduce unnecessary delays in patients being transferred to an inpatient bed and reduce the number of transfers between wards.

Mrs Kadum said: "We will all need to focus on discharging patients who no longer need to be in hospital. We will also be working closely with our partners in health and social care to support us in doing this.

"We are speaking to staff and staff representatives involved in ward moves about the plans. We can all be doing things to support patient flow and discharge in our own areas, which in turn will ease pressure on the system. Hopefully this will help to make a real difference, not only to our patients but to staff."

More work is due to take place over the summer to tackle capacity issues at both the RSH and the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford.

Ian Donnelly, assistant chief operating officer, said: "It is anticipated that during the spring and summer the demand for emergency care should reduce.

"During this time we will be doing intensive work with our partner organisations to support alternatives to hospital admission and make sure plans are in place for the coming winter."

Today's revelations are the latest challenge facing the NHS Trust. It was revealed this week that there had been critical results from an inpatient survey, with patients rating both hospitals as worse than average in a number of areas. Patients said more information needed to be given about medication as they left hospital and family and carers needed to be more involved in the discharge process.

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