7:00am Thursday 29th July 2010
By Claire Fox
A ward dedicated to the care of elderly patients at St Helier Hospital is to be closed.
The hospital trust has confirmed it is closing a ward of 23 beds manned by medical staff trained in caring for the elderly.
Although six new care of the elderly beds will be opened in another part of the hospital, there will be an overall loss of 17 beds.
A spokesman for the trust said: “For the last few years the trust has been carrying out work to reduce the amount of time patients spend unnecessarily in our hospitals.
“Keeping people in hospital longer is inconvenient for them and means they are away from their home and loved ones for longer than necessary. It also means that we’re not working as efficiently as we could be.”
But Kevin O'Brien, Unison branch secretary at Epsom and St Helier Hospitals, said he is concerned there may be nowhere else for those elderly patients to go. He said there is not currently sufficient care in the community to adequately look after those discharged, who may not have families to support them.
Mr O'Brien also said the loss of a ward and reduction in the number of beds could put a strain on hospital resources and lead to patients being shunted around the hospital.
He said: “When people are moved from pillar to post they get anxious and that is particularly true of the elderly. The older you are the more distressed you are likely to become.”
The trust confirmed that the ward will still be available on an ad hoc basis, as a general escalation ward, to cope with busy periods at the hospital.
But a member of staff at the hospital, who did not want to be named, expressed concern that this could mean the ward would be staffed by expensive agency staff, not trained to care for the elderly.
Mr O'Brian added: “We have had issues in the past where wards have had to be reopened again because they were closed too quickly. When that happens, you start to lose the savings you have made.”
Earlier this month the trust warned it had to cut £30m from its budget, amounting to about 10 percent of its overall budget.
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