Patient discharges from hospital to community care

Some patients who are well enough to be discharged from hospital require ongoing support in the community or at home to enable them to continue with their recovery.  For these patients, our teams work with our local authority colleagues to ensure they receive suitable care in the community.

Continuing to recover outside of hospital, with the right care and support, is much better than staying in hospital for number of reasons. Most importantly it helps you to retain independence and muscle strength and lowers your risk of infection. It also allows us to provide a much needed bed to someone else who is very unwell and in need of urgent care at a time when bed shortages are a really significant challenge for us.

Currently, some patients who are ready to be discharged may be provided with an interim care arrangement before getting their preferred option. For example, they might temporarily receive support in a different care home while waiting for their preferred home. We know some patients or their families may not always be happy about this but are able to assure them that the packages of care which have been arranged for our patients are safe and designed to meet their needs. We only discharge patients if our medical teams recommend that they are ready to leave hospital.  

Therefore, from today, we will be speaking with these patients or their families, and providing letters advising them that, as there is a suitable option to continue their recovery in their community, they should accept this package of care. If, when patients are receiving care in the community, they, or their family, wish alternative care plans to be set up then our local authority colleagues will be able to help with this.

We want to ensure patients are in the right place at the right time for the best recovery possible while also being able to treat those who are in urgent need of hospital care during these challenging times. Thank you for your understanding. If patients or family members have any questions, they can speak to either the nurse in charge or their consultant.

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23/12/22