Coronavirus: Council buys extra beds to support recovering coronavirus patients

City council health teams are reviewing the hospital discharge policy and ways to re-integrate patients back into their communities following coronavirus recovery.

Peterborough City Council’s online Cabinet meeting on Monday (May 11), Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald commended council staff for working ‘flat-out’ during the pandemic emergency, but said: “What is our policy for getting patients back into their communities post recovery and are we achieving this? And what might be the long-term impact of reducing hospital admissions during the pandemic?”

Executive Director for People and Communities, Wendi Ogle-Welbourn said: “Very early on in the crisis, both the local council and the CCG got together to agree the purchase of additional bed capacity outside of the hospitals for use by recovering coronavirus patients.

This was done within our residential and nursing care homes where we have purchased over 300 additional beds and I’m very pleased to report that those beds have been enough capacity up to date.

“At the moment we’re still maintaining, on a daily basis, about 130-bed capacity, which is very important in terms of matching where we need people to go as we re-introduce them back into their own communities.

“I can also report that every patient that was fit to be discharged from hospital, has been able to so in a timely manner, which meant that when the hospitals needed to admit people into hospital care with coronavirus, they had plenty of space to accommodate them.

“As a result of this, it’s just been announced that our hospitals are now able to re-start the treatment of non-COVID-19 cases.

“In terms of people being discharged from hospitals following COVID-19 recovery, every single person will therefore have a test before they leave and they’re given a ‘COVID-19 Recovery Plan’ that is individual to them and their recovery needs.

It’s really important to stress that between the Local Authority and our colleagues in Health Care we look at each individual case on its merits and the right recovery place for them.

“For some discharge patients who have had coronavirus, the care home is their only home and so we pay very careful attention to their recovery symptoms in order to avoid introducing infection back into that care home community.”