Daily Insight: Corridor conundrum

“Nobody wants it,” said University Hospitals North Midlands Trust’s chair David Wakefield of the trust’s decision to return to ED corridor care after eradicating it before the pandemic.

Although the trust is by no means the only one having to resort to this way of caring for patients, it has been open in its recent board meeting and papers about the balance of risks it has had to weigh up when deciding to bring back corridor care in ED.

The trust has confirmed, after a risk assessment, that a minimum of 15 patients will be cared for in trolleys in ED and additional bank and agency nursing and paramedic staff will be sourced to help care for them.

It has also set out the large number of downsides, including no call bells, piped oxygen or suction, increasing the risk of harm”, “lack of privacy/dignity for patients”, and damaging “the wellbeing of ED staff”.

The trust is clear this is a temporary measure, but it also hasn’t set a date for it to end. Considering the huge pressures in trusts at the moment, corridor care across the NHS could well be here for months to come.

The fast and the furious

The ill effects of rushing to discharge patients from hospital have been laid bare to HSJ.

An increasing number of people are being “warehoused” in inappropriate care beds, condemned unnecessarily to long-term care, and “lost” to health and care services, several senior figures in community and social care have warned.

The Health and Safety Investigation Branch has also raised the issue, telling HSJ inappropriate care placements are leading to harm and readmissions, while a major accountability gap remained over the safety of discharges.

The average length of hospital stay has increased compared to pre-covid, with a big jump in those staying more than three weeks. Many in the NHS put this down to a lack of social care capacity meaning more medically fit people are stuck in hospital. Prime minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday personally highlighted the need to reduce delayed discharges.

But senior staff in community health and social care services told HSJ hospitals were increasingly demanding rapid discharges, often as part of “surge” measures when they are very full and under pressure to reduce ambulance queues. Read the full story here.