One patient has been stuck in St Mary’s Hospital for 109 days as shortages and pressures in the Island’s care sector have made it impossible to leave.
Branded as a significant challenge to the whole system, the Isle of Wight NHS Trust has continued to see difficulties in admitting patients as beds were full of patients who do not need to be there.
Speaking at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust board meeting yesterday (Thursday), chief operation officer Joe Smyth said a whole ward in the emergency department — 24 people — were waiting to be admitted to St Mary’s that morning.
They could not get in, Mr Smyth said, because 72 patients were fit and ready for discharge, which is putting a huge strain across the organisation.
The care crisis on the Island has led to ‘gridlock’ in St Mary’s for months now as a lack of staff, care packages and short term community placements are not available.
On a good day, Mr Smyth said, only eight to ten people would need admitting to hospital with 60 patients ready to leave but the whole situation was precarious.
As soon as there was a spike in demand, he said, there would be no more capacity so the hospital would enter into an emergency response.
As the hospital becomes more congested, staff are becoming increasingly fatigued as they face rising pressure to clear space, especially in the Emergency Department (ED).
Additional wards are still open in the hospital to try and keep up with demand but Mr Smyth said it is just stretching the nursing complement further.
He assured the trust board, patient safety was at the forefront of their minds.
Juliet Pearce, the director of nursing, midwifery and allied health professions said being in hospital was not the quality of life someone should be experiencing when they could be at home.
To avoid admittance to the hospital, a new dementia outreach team and community recovery service have been able to ensure people are cared for in more appropriate settings, outside of the hospital.
It is also affecting the emergency access standard target — which vows to have treated or admitted 95 per cent of patients within 4 hours — but the trust has not been able to meet it since June 2021.
Patients waiting to be admitted are facing overnight stays in the ED, with the trust saying patients are receiving care in ‘sub-optimal environments’.
In January, 18 people spent longer than 12 hours in the ED although this had lowered from the 28 in December.
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