Halifax and Huddersfield's hospitals 'at highest alert' with all beds full

A meeting of Kirklees Council’s health and adult social care scrutiny panel on Wednesday heard from director of finance at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT), Gary Boothby, that more people are coming to the hospitals for treatment.

"I know that we are currently in all available beds, he said. “We hadn’t planned to be in all the beds but we need to be because of the volume of activity that’s coming through the front door.

“Year to date, we’ve seen an extra seven per cent attendance in terms of A&E departments and we’ve seen 14 per cent more non-elective activity – so those are patients that are admitted probably as a result of an attendance at A&E.

"That all requires us to increase our bed capacity which is causing us challenges financially.”

Councillor Eric Firth wanted to know where patients who needed to be admitted to hospital were being placed with the hospitals being full but didn’t get a definitive answer.

Later in the meeting, it emerged that CHFT was operating at Operational Pressures Escalation Level (OPE) four – the highest level of alert, signifying severe pressure.

Vicky Dutchburn, director of operational delivery and performance for Kirklees Integrated Care Board, highlighted pressures around Norovirus and RSV, and said the closure of wards had tipped the trust into an OPEL four.

In addition, 20 per cent of patients across the trust’s hospitals were said to have no need to reside there, being deemed medically fit to be discharged.

Ms Dutchburn explained that there are a number of factors impacting this figure – whether there’s support at home, transport needing to be arranged, the need for extra tests or outstanding results coming back – with patients sometimes swapping from being considered medically fit to then needing to be kept in hospital.

The average length of time a person remains in hospital after being deemed medically fit stands at around four days, she said.

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