‘We will find a bed for someone who needs it’
A BED will always be found for patients requiring urgent hospital care, Health & Social Care has stated following concerns raised by a claim on social media that a patient who was advised to stay overnight had to go home as only private beds were available.
A committee spokeswoman said that there were admitting wards for patients requiring urgent care. This includes Victoria Wing, usually a wing for 19 private patients.
‘If these beds are full, we can utilise additional beds as part of our business continuity plans,’ she said.
The PEH has 130 beds, which can be increased to 151. Giffard Ward is usually staffed for 16 beds, but this can be increased to 26 using additional staff.
‘We are seeing increasing capacity issues all year-round now – historically this was linked to winter pressures,’ she said.
‘As such we flex the bed state up and down to accommodate these pressures, and this includes Victoria Wing. The hospital is generally running at 90-95% capacity, compared to our UK colleagues who run daily at 100% capacity.’
Sometimes elective surgery has to be postponed due to a lack of available bed space, especially if the speciality is a critical care bed and the unit is fully occupied.
‘The decision to postpone surgery is not something that is taken lightly but there are occasions where it is not possible to carry out elective surgery due to other critical emergency surgery pressures.’
HSC said that the pressure on beds and consistent increase in demand from an ageing demographic, highlighted the importance of the second phase of the hospital modernisation project, for which the committee is battling to secure funding in the States later this summer.
