Hull hospital care unit frees up 200 beds within weeks

Patient Yvonne Stone said the new care unit had given her back her confidence

More than 200 patients have been moved from wards to a care unit that was built to help free up hospital beds since the site opened two months ago.

The £3.8m centre next door to Hull Royal Infirmary opened on 24 July.

It aims to help the NHS discharge patients who no longer need to be in hospital, but do not have a social care plan that allows them to go home.

Manager Angela Collins said it had "freed up quite a lot of beds in the hospital for patients who need them".

Last winter hundreds of patients were waiting on wards for social care support, despite being well enough to be discharged.

At times the hospital had up to 200 patients ready to go home, taking up the equivalent of eight wards of beds, but unable to leave because of a lack of community care in place for them.

The new Rossmore Community Rehabilitation Centre was built to tackle the problem.

Pat Lamb said she will get home faster thanks to the physiotherapy sessions at the care unit

Pat Lamb, 85, spent five weeks in hospital.

She has now moved to the care unit for intensive physiotherapy sessions which will help her improve her mobility enough to go home.

"They were good in the hospital, but it was quite noisy, with dementia patients shouting," she said.

She said she would also get home quicker than if she had been discharged straight from the ward because of the rehabilitation therapy.

Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust decided to build its own care unit to help free up beds

Patient Yvonne Stone, 81, said the service was "life-changing" and that being moved out of a clinical ward had helped her recovery.

"The moment they brought me down from ward 11 my life changed and I cannot tell you how good it's been in here," she said.

"I'm up and about. They give you the confidence to get on with as much as you can possibly do."

Physiotherapist Dan Boyle said the service helps patients get home faster

The centre admits up to eight patients a day from the hospital and most people go home within 10 days.

People receive intensive physiotherapy, which means they often need fewer community care visits than they would if they had gone straight home from the ward, staff said.

Senior physiotherapist Dan Boyle said staff pressures in hospital meant people might not receive as much rehabilitation support.

"Here, we aim to see patients five days a week, a minimum of once a day, so there is a faster throughput because of that. We are getting patients like Pat home faster as a result," he said.

The centre has helped more than 200 patients since it opened in July, said manager Angela Collins

Ms Collins said when patients left hospital they might need three community care calls a day, but people who used the unit had had enough therapy to reduce their social care package needs.

She said: "Community care packages are really hard to come by at the moment, so this reduces demand."