Guernsey hospital bed shortage due to lack of care home space

A shortage of beds at Guernsey's hospital is being caused by a lack of space in island care homes, health bosses have said.

People working in the health service say there are people in the Princess Elizabeth Hospital, who should be receiving care in the community.

The issue is causing a knock-on effect on waiting lists.

Medical director, Dr Peter Rabey, said: "We could fill a couple more care homes tomorrow."

He said Guernsey had the "right" number of hospital beds but said: "What we are struggling with as an island is a lack of care home beds and the care home sector I think needs some support at the moment.

"We've got 30 patients in our hospital beds who really would be better in community settings in care homes, nursing homes, at home with packages of support and we need to get those people where they're better looked after."

Dr Rabey said they were getting help on the issue from the "very highest levels of government" and were looking at "every option we can think of" to solve it, including questioning whether the States of Guernsey needed to provide more care home capacity or incentivise specialists in the sector to do it.

The States of Guernsey said 27 procedures had been postponed so far in September.

Dr Gary Yarwood, consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine, said it was a "difficult situation" but the hospital was continuing to put priority one patients first, particularly cancer care.

He said: "The simple fact is that when community care patients occupy medical beds, acute medical patients have to move to surgical beds, and we then lack the inpatient beds for surgical patients."

Elaine Burgess, the associate director for acute services, said the building of a new critical care unit was being prioritised for the first phase of the hospital modernisation project and construction was due to start in the second quarter of 2022, which would increase bed capacity.

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