Last week, Health Secretary Steve Barclay detailed support being rolled out by the government to give further support to the health and social care sector. The provisions include £200 million, which is now with local Integrated Care Boards, targeted at supporting the discharge of around 2,500 people.
A further £50 million has been made available to create ‘modular units’, dedicated spaces to free up beds and help get ambulances back on the road.
Bath, Swindon and Wiltshire are receiving £3,030,000 to buy extra beds in the community.
Together, these measures will increase patient safety, experiences and outcomes. They will do this by freeing up hospital beds and moving those who are in need of social care into a more appropriate and comfortable setting.
Andrew has long argued that discharge rates are key to improving healthcare. In 2022 he put forward a Ten Minute Rule Bill, ‘Selma’s Bill’, which introduced measures to accelerate the discharge rate of those fit to leave hospital beds, thus freeing them up for sick patients who need further medical intervention. The bill is named after his mother-in-law who died in an inappropriate unit which was not equipped for elderly terminal care. His speech introducing Selma’s Bill is available on Hansard: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-03-16/debates/3D0FEAE2-0289-434A-904C-D2550157AC78/Healthcare(DelayedDischarges)
Welcoming Barclay’s announcement, Andrew said, ‘The announcement is in line with my social care Bill introduced last year.
‘I'm meeting our local Integrated Care Board soon and will press it on how our allocation will be spent so medically fit people can be discharged quickly from the RUH and Salisbury to home or homely settings in the community.
‘We have battled community hospital closures locally over the years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. This welcome initiative bears us out.’