In April 2017, the Trust met with its commissioners (NHS NEW Devon CCG), to discuss the temporary closure of inpatient services at Holsworthy Hospital. The Trust is now able to update the community on the steps required to safely reopen the inpatient beds.
In order for the beds to reopen, the Trust needs to address both the staffing challenges and the low occupancy of the inpatient beds. In the interests of complete transparency with the public, the Trust has published the report it presented to the CCG on its website.
The work to address the bed occupancy falls into two parts. Firstly, the Trust and the CCG are undertaking a series of audits and reviews to understand the reasons for the declining occupancy and whether anything could reverse this trend.
In order to do this, the Trust and the CCG are reviewing patient notes, admission data and data from domiciliary care and residential care homes for the six to nine months prior to the temporary closure of the beds, to understand why occupancy levels have declined.
Secondly, the Trust will ask its partners and commissioners to help explore whether extending the catchment area for patients currently able to be admitted to Holsworthy Hospital would increase the occupancy to fill the 16 beds.
If the outcome of this work suggests that the inpatient beds could run at a safe capacity, then the Trust will look at the workforce required to safely deliver the service.
The Trust is committed to keeping the community informed about this work and will be setting up a group of key stakeholders who will meet to oversee the process.
The Trust would like to thank everybody for their continued patience and understanding as we work to address these challenges.
More information
The inpatient beds at the hospital closed temporarily in March due to significant safety concerns.
The Trust and the CCG met on 24 April 2017 to discuss the Trust’s planned approach to solving the bed occupancy issues at Holsworthy Community Hospital, and the CCG supports the outlined approach.
We would like to remind people that the clinics at Holsworthy Hospital are running as normal. The temporary closure of inpatient beds at Holsworthy Hospital does not affect any of the other services at the Hospital.