Hospital Beds and Social Care

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, with today’s reports of hundreds of care homes closing their doors to new admissions because of the rapid spread of omicron, adding to the huge pressure on hospitals, can the Minister explain in more detail why urgent priority funding is not being directed to the provision of step-down facilities to address the escalating crisis? We are told that we have new diagnostic units and resurrected Nightingale hospitals, but step-down facilities in local NHS and community settings, where patients medically fit for discharge can be monitored and properly assessed, have been shown to be working very successfully. Would not that provide the right care at the right time, as promised in last month’s social care White Paper?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

We have been looking at different pathways out of hospitals, and one of the discharge pathways is step-down care. One issue that the task force has looked at is how we improve and increase accessibility to appropriate step-down care when a patient is unable to go straight to their home.