Guardian - plan to discharge COVID patients to care homes is madness.

[kropotkin]

Isnt the story here about insurance and those who have not been isolated for 14 days first?

BBC article, my bold:

Covid-19: Insurance fears stop care homes taking patients

Homes worry about being sued if people contract the virus while they are staying there.

www.bbc.co.uk

And soem designated settings stuff from government doc document: Discharge into care homes: designated settings

That's not the article we were being invited to comment on.

 

[panpete]

Isnt the story here about insurance and those who have not been isolated for 14 days first?

BBC article, my bold:

Covid-19: Insurance fears stop care homes taking patients

Homes worry about being sued if people contract the virus while they are staying there.

www.bbc.co.uk

Thanks for the background info, I didn't read it all because I have a short attention span but having a background gives it more context.

And soem designated settings stuff from government doc document: Discharge into care homes: designated settings

 

[elbows]

That's not the article we were being invited to comment on.

Its covering much the same news, this quote is from the Guardian article:

In mid-December, DHSC policy on discharges said everyone with a positive test result being sent from a hospital into a care home should first be sent to a designated facility set up specially to handle potentially infectious patients. This was described as an “important precaution to protect care home residents and minimise, where possible, the risk of infection”.

However, only 136 of the so-called “hot homes” have been established after the government set a goal of at least 500 in October.

The December policy also said infected patients who had been isolated for at least 14 days and were not showing new symptoms need not be tested but that “a clinical assessment should be made to determine subsequent onward movement”.

I would say that both articles are potentially a bit confusing about the various different sorts of discharge conditions involved. The BBC One makes the casual reference I quoted about patients who hadnt isolated for 14 days. At the end of the Guardian article they are quoting the guidance change involving the testing requirement for those who have completed the 14 day isolation requirement. And the Guardian article is also a follow-on from their previous days report which combined a story about early discharges in general from hospitals, with the changed advice about whether care home discharges have to go via 'hot' care homes first.

Hospital patients to be sent to hotels to free up beds for critical Covid patients

Exclusive: emergency measures will let hospitals in England discharge thousands of patients early

www.theguardian.com

Anyway I'm well aware that issues of discharge to care homes, bed blocking etc, and the discharge picture in general is one of the areas where long-standing capacity issues with hospitals and care homes comes to a head during normal times and 'normal winters'. So it is no surprise to find intense pressure on this side of things right now in a pandemic. But whether the patient has a recent test or not, and however long they've been 'in isolation', given what happened last time when the NHS England pandemic discharge policy helped ignite an epidemic in care homes, I approved of introducing a buffer into that system. That they failed to set such things up at sufficient scale before this winter is nothing short of a disgrace. It would have been better if all homes could have been brought up to the required standard, the 'hot homes' thing was in itself a fudge, and they couldnt even manage to achieve that fudge properly.

 

[panpete]

Its covering much the same news, this quote is from the Guardian article:

Thank you elbows