PEH bed capacity has exceeded 95%
TEN operations have been postponed so far this month as the hospital experiences an unseasonably high demand for beds.
Bed capacity has reached more than 95%, meaning a black alert, a total of three times this month while it has been above 90%, a red alert, another three times.
It has led to Health & Social Care to consider creating an additional medical ward.
The committee said bed occupancy at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital usually peaked during the winter months, and historically it experienced less demand during the summer period.
This summer, however, was proving to be unusually busy with demand across July.
In particular, demand was very high at both the Emergency Department and in terms of beds.
The committee said its PEH teams were managing this demand and would continue to deliver the services required by islanders.
Senior management recognised more capacity and flexibility was required, and a proposal was being pursued now to deliver services using two medical wards.
Juliet Beal, chief nurse, said: ‘Our nursing teams and staff across HSC work extremely hard to deliver high-quality services which meet demand, year round.
‘We are seeing a particularly busy summer this year and this, together with the exceptional demand we managed over the winter months, has led us to consider how best we can deliver services across our medical wards which really feel the impact of service pressures when demand for acute care increases.
‘For these reasons, but to make sure we constantly put the needs of the patient first, we are actively pursuing a project to introduce a second medical ward, meaning that the demand can be spread across two wards, providing the capacity and resilience the service requires.’
HSC’s professional planning teams meet at least twice a day to monitor service demand and to plan and deliver service responses.
The committee said MSG colleagues, St John Road Ambulance and other community partners had been and remained integral to this work.
‘Our teams will always take time to explain any changes that we have to make, for any reason, including when pressure simply means that postponement of a procedure is unavoidable,’ the committee said.
‘The 104 adult medical and surgical bed capacity PEH hospital remains very busy, however, and has experienced three ‘’red’’ events, and three ‘’black’’ events in July. Red is when elective admissions would take occupancy above 90% of available beds. Black is when elective admissions would take occupancy above 95% of available beds.
‘The actions taken are always proportionate and considered, and we have retained required capacity for clinically urgent cases when faced with such difficulties all summer. Part of this has required postponements of procedures and these have totalled 10 for July, within a total procedure number delivered of 82 episodes where the patient required a ward bed.
‘We apologise for any postponement and will work hard to reschedule if this happens.’
In terms of the future, HSC said its major, multi-million pound ‘reprofiling’ project would help it keep pace with the increased demands.
Director of reprofiling Jan Coleman, said it would deliver changes, upgrades and enhancements that the public needed and required.
‘We are looking in detail now to plan the sequencing of that work, to make sure we undertake works in priority order, and ensure there is no discontinuity of service,’ she said.
‘We want to enhance our critical care capacity and we want to relocate services where necessary to ensure we have the right proximity to theatres and ensure the ‘’flow’’ of our services work really well. The reprofiling proposal has received a positive response from the States and we expect to submit business cases this year to allow work to commence as soon as possible in this critical area.’
The committee thanked islanders for their support and understanding and encouraged people to get in touch if they had any specific concerns about their care.
