Listeners to The Richie Allen Show will have heard me discussing the potential for bed-blocking to exacerbate the perennial NHS Winter crisis. When it was announced that covid jabs would be made compulsory for care workers, I and others suggested that this would lead to seniors staying in hospital for longer than necessary, as there would be a shortage of carers to help them convalesce at home.
It’s happening now. According to the BBC this lunchtime:
A woman with Alzheimer’s has been left stranded in hospital because of a lack of carers to help look after her at home, her husband says.
Brenda Devine, 57, from Greysteel, County Londonderry, was admitted to the Waterside Hospital seven months ago.
Her family said she had been told she was ready to go home, but could not leave due to a shortage of carers.
Her husband Terence said it felt like his wife was “in a prison and I can’t get her out”.
“She has been released, but I can’t get her home,” he told BBC Radio Foyle.
The Western Health and Social Care Trust said it did not comment on individual cases.
According to The Guardian today, care homes will lose as many as 50,000 staff as a result of the no jab, no job rule, which comes into force tomorrow.
So, not only is there a huge shortfall in mobile care workers who visit people in their own homes, care facilities are at breaking point too. As I’ve said before, it’s a perfect storm.
Hospitals will fill quickly and stay full. Bed-blocking is one factor. There are over 5 million people waiting for treatment that they were denied when the NHS became the covid health service.
The NHS is short 40,000 nurses and more than 10,000 doctors. Bed capacity is less than half what it was in 1989.
Cue Winter lockdowns and vaccine passports. It’s all so predictable.
