Hull hospital trust builds care facility to free up beds

The new unit will be built next to Hull Royal Infirmary

A new care unit is being built at Hull Royal Infirmary for patients who no longer need medical treatment but cannot be discharged.

It comes as figures show the Hull University Teaching Hospitals Trust had almost 19,000 patients it could not discharge in the last year.

They had to remain in hospital as no care package was in place for them.

The trust said the prefabricated £3.8m 60-bed unit would be completed within the next few weeks.

Chief executive Chris Long said the ability to discharge patients out of hospital into appropriate care packages was the "biggest single challenge" the trust had faced over the last year.

"That is what has kept our hospital blocked and silted up," he said.

The trust said Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital had a shortage of beds every day because up to 200 people were waiting on wards for social care support, despite being well enough to be discharged.

Mr Long said if care packages were not immediately available they would transfer those patients to the new unit.

Since April 2022 the trust said 18,700 patients ready to be discharged had to stay in hospital and one patient remained for 211 days.

It could not calculate the cost of those patients with "no criteria to reside", but it had opened three wards to house them at a cost of £5.2m.

Mr Long said the unit, which is being constructed on the old helipad next to Hull Royal Infirmary, would enable the trust to improve the flow of patients through the hospital.

"Reducing the number of patients with 'no criteria to reside' is imperative to reduce waiting times for patients and enable our specialist staff, including our surgical teams, to do what they do best every day," he said.