Labor would use part of the NHS budget to buy beds in care homes

NHS money will be used to buy thousands of care home beds under Labor plans to reduce overcrowding in England’s hospitals, long waiting times in A&E and patients getting stuck in ambulances .

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, said the move would tackle the huge human and financial “waste” of beds occupied by patients who could leave but are stuck there due to a lack of care outside hospital. There are 13,000 beds in England – enough to fill 26 hospitals – occupied by such patients.

If Labor wins the general election on July 4, it will channel part of the £165 billion of the NHS budget into the scheme as part of a series of immediate changes aimed at easing the healthcare crisis.

Streeting made clear in a speech that a Labor government would expect hospitals across England to follow the example of the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which spends £9 million a year buying up care home beds to reduce delayed discharges and to free up beds.

That initiative – which it launched as a way to avoid a ‘winter crisis’ in 2022-2023 – has freed up 165 beds, helped reduce the number of patients being avoidably admitted and saved the trust between £17 million and £23 million. estimated.

“We will learn from the great innovations already happening in healthcare in this way, and take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS,” said Streeting, who cited the Leeds approach as a model to follow in our conversations with members of the NHS. the Association of Medical Journalists.

“I went to St Mary’s hospital in Paddington (London) this month where a patient was stuck in hospital for 60 days, despite being well enough to leave, because care was not available. Not only is that a waste of the patient’s time and life, it’s also a waste of taxpayer dollars.

“The number of patients in hospital beds per day who cannot be discharged due to lack of care in the community could fill 26 hospitals. The price for that failure is £1.7 billion a year.

“Labour will ensure more hospitals do what Leeds teaching hospitals are already doing: invest in local social care beds to discharge patients faster – better for patients and cheaper for the taxpayer.”

The 13,000 beds occupied by patients who can leave hospital represent one in seven of the healthcare system’s total bed stock.

However, speaking anonymously, a senior NHS figure questioned how the NHS in England could afford to buy care home beds to emulate what Leeds has done, as it is on course to With a deficit of £3 billion by the end of 2024-2025.

The emergency room doctors were happy with the move. If the plan is rolled out, as Streeting hopes, it could unblock hospitals struggling to cope with the huge number of patients they care for and ensure ambulances arrive faster after a 999 call and people no longer get stuck on trolleys or long corridor care’. “, they said.

“We support the plan for NHS hospitals to buy social care beds,” said Dr Adrian Boyle, chairman of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.

“Around 13,000 people are currently waiting in our acute hospitals for some form of social care. Anything that can reduce this terrible total can only be good, for the patients and for the functioning of our hospitals.

“If this works, it could be very useful in tackling all the issues in the emergency care pathway, from the first time someone calls 999, to the moment someone arrives at hospital, is transferred to the emergency department and ultimately ends up in hospital. the main hospital.”

The Leeds Trust estimates that the percentage of inpatients it was able to discharge in less than 27 days has risen from 21% to 38% as a direct result of millions spent on care home beds.

Sally Warren, policy director at the King’s Fund think tank, said: “NHS and social care operate as part of one interconnected system. When one part of the system is under pressure, the long waiting times can pile up elsewhere.

“Perhaps the most visible example is when a lack of community or social care support prevents people from being discharged from hospital, which in turn means there is no space for new patients to be admitted to hospital, and we all see the long term results. Every winter there are lines of ambulances in the emergency room.

But she added: “Let’s not confuse this approach (in Leeds) with a plan to solve all the problems in social care. It is primarily an initiative to improve patient flow through hospitals and will not solve the fundamental mismatch between supply and demand for publicly funded social care in England.

The idea of ​​Streeting is not new. The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have done this money that was available to healthcare institutions in recent years to buy care home beds to deal with the service’s annual “winter crisis”.

Dr. Tim Cooksley, former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said that while it was “pleased that Wes Streeting is recognizing this problem and considering solutions… the focus should be on ensuring high-quality community care beds with expert rehabilitation teams as that would be a valuable addition to elderly care.

“Purchasing additional nursing home beds will not in itself stop ward care or improve outcomes for older people. Moving older people to the wrong place within the healthcare system is like moving the deck chairs on the Titanic: it won’t help them and it won’t stop the overcrowding that leaves so many people languishing in emergency room corridors,” he added .