Social care shortage compounds NI hospital pressures

The shortage of health workers in Northern Ireland's social care sector must be addressed to relieve pressure on hospital beds, Age NI has said.

All of Northern Ireland's health trusts are failing to meet emergency department waiting time targets because they do not have enough beds available.

Many beds are being used by people who need care in order to leave hospital.

But Age NI's chief executive said staff shortage in hospitals was the "tip of the iceberg" compared with social care.

Speaking on the BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme, Linda Robinson from Age NI said staff retention in the social care sector was a real problem and the rates of pay were "appalling".

She said investment was needed in the sector in order to solve the mounting problems.

Health trusts across the UK are facing unprecedented pressure in emergency departments and hospital wards because of increasing numbers of patients and falling numbers of NHS staff.

On 19 December, a 48-hour time limit was introduced to discharge patients who were deemed medically fit to leave hospital.

At the time, the department said those patients would be asked to go home or, if they were unable to go home, be transferred to the first available care facility that met their needs, regardless of whether or not it was their first choice of accommodation.

Health authorities asked patients and families to work with staff so that hospital beds and ambulances could be reserved for those most in need.

However, Ms Robinson pointed out that deeming a patient medically fit for discharge does not necessarily mean that they are healthy and well.

Many older patients are extremely frail and some families are unable to care for loved ones who have complex or round-the-clock care needs.

Ms Robinson said: "Older people have a choice and families have a choice.

"It may not be appropriate for people to be generally discharged into a nursing or residential facility.

"It's got to be appropriate or what happens is we have unplanned admissions back into the system on a very short-term basis."

She said that returning to contingency measures using during the Covid pandemic could be looked at as a short-term solution.

"During Covid we made significant steps in changing things," she said.

"If we don't have enough staff to deliver one-to-one care in the community is there something in going back to the models that we had when we looked at [discharging patients to] hotels?

"We built a system in the Odyssey [Arena] to take that pressure out of those hospital beds.

"Lots of solutions have got to come forward."

An emergency consultant based at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital described the situation as "scandalous and shocking"

Dr Paul Kerr said hundreds of patients were lying on trolleys and he warned that the crowding in Northern Ireland's hospitals was likely to lead to more unnecessary deaths in the future.