Oral Answers to Questions Debate
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Mike Martin
Main Page: Mike Martin (Liberal Democrat - Tunbridge Wells)Department Debates - View all Mike Martin's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(4 days, 1 hour ago)
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Karin Smyth
I commend my hon. Friend, and our hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham), for their diligent work with their trust and local system. Progress is being made on that EPR, which will have huge benefits. I will ensure that he has a clear outline of progress to the final planned operating of the go-live date for that issue. I am happy to meet him.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
Blocked beds cost Pembury hospital £18,000 every night, yet discharge teams have to manually phone care homes to place people there. My constituent Debbie has created a dashboard—it is basically like Skyscanner—to accelerate discharges by matching discharged patients to care beds. It has already received seed funding of £200,000 from Kent county council, and could save up to £7 million a year in Pembury alone. Will the Minister meet me and Debbie to discuss that idea?
Karin Smyth
The hon. Gentleman highlights the serious problem of staff operating in an analogue age in the NHS, which we keenly highlighted in the 10-year plan. We want to move the system into a more digital age. We would be very happy to hear more about the scheme that he outlines and the great work that staff are doing to get over some of the problems that they are working with.