Hospital patient discharges putting strain on Devon's care sector

Devon care homes say they are being asked to accept patients with Covid-19, flu and other infectious diseases to ease the pressure on local hospitals.

One owner said it felt like the start of the pandemic again, as the safety of care homes was being "compromised".

Devon has some of the longest waits for emergency care in the country, according to NHS figures.

NHS Devon said it was working with the care sector to look into issues and make improvements.

A spokesperson said all parts of the health and care system were under "significant pressure".

Simon Spiller, owner of The Croft Residential Care Home in Newton Abbot, said since the start of winter the home was being asked to shortcut its assessment process to help ease the blockages in Devon's hospitals.

He said other local care homes have told him they were facing the same pressure.

Mr Spiller said: "We're being encouraged, or really asked, to shortcut our assessment process. Normally, one of our team would go to the hospital to assess people, to really understand their care needs, to ensure they're an appropriate fit for our care home, which specialises in dementia.

"Increasingly, because of the speed they're trying to achieve a discharge, we're being asked to accept people at kind of face value, as presented by the NHS."

Mr Spiller said The Croft was "standing up" for the integrity of its processes, despite pressure from hospitals to take in patients ready to be discharged from wards.

Analysis by Jen Smith, Correspondent, BBC Spotlight

The pressure on the NHS in the South West is well documented - the region has some of the longest ambulance handover delays and emergency care waits in the country.

These are hospitals struggling to get people in through the front door, because of the huge backlog of patients inside.

These patients are "clinically fit for discharge" but need a social care package in place in order to leave.

It is this pressure that care homes said they were beginning to feel. The residential homes I have spoken to said they have the utmost sympathy for the predicament, but corners cannot be cut.

Wendy Marsh runs three care homes in South Devon, she said it was a "horrendous situation" with instances of residents arriving from hospital with flu, Covid-19 or norovirus.

"We understand the pressures the NHS is under, but they need to work more closely with us, at the moment it feels like they want a dumping ground," she said.

Lucy Bull, manager at Castle Grove care home in Bampton near Tiverton, and a director for the Devon Care Homes Collaborative, said discharges from hospital was something which needed to be looked at going forward.

She said: "Because the whole system is in crisis, discharges are becoming worse, because the hospitals are so desperate to get people out, and equally to be fair, you know, when we have residents in hospital, we're very keen to get them back ourselves, but absolutely there are corners being cut.

"We're quite often finding that people are being discharged not with the right paperwork, without the right medication, and actually I have to be frank, before Christmas, we actually got the wrong resident delivered to our care home.

"They should have gone to another home in South Devon, but the paperwork was wrong."

Ms Bull said Castle Grove had to decline the return of a resident recently, whose room was ready and waiting, because the ward she had been on in hospital had a norovirus outbreak.

She added: "I can't risk getting that, I've heard so many stories recently across Devon, and it doesn't just affect the residents, it affects the staff.

"We're already on our knees anyway with staffing across the sector, and we just can't take that risk. It's really hard, you're saying no to somebody about coming back to the home, and that's an incredibly hard thing for us to make a decision on."

An NHS spokesperson said: "Our caring teams work hard to ensure people are safely discharged from hospital when they are assessed as medically fit to leave, whether to their own home or a care home.

"We know we don't always get it right and we are working closely with our care sector colleagues to listen to their concerns, look into issues raised and make improvements wherever we can.

"All parts of our health and care system are under significant pressure and we know all teams are doing their best to provide care for local people."

Follow BBC News South West on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].