Releasing people from hospital into care homes

This is down to nursing staff, not the government or Matt Hancock.
People now are looking for blame !

This whole debacle is illustrative of the Government's total lack of understanding of how the Care sector works.

It is currently operated at arms length, by the private sector on a piecemeal basis, with different care homes doing different things at all levels. Hence some are excellent, others not so.

Which is why it all needs a complete overhaul and closer alignment with the NHS. And HMG has yet again kicked a review into the long grass.

You have to wonder whether some people with 'the right connections' are making a great deal of money out of the current social care system...

Let's hope there is a sensible enquiry with a view to learning for the future rather than heaping blame on people who were doing their best in a very difficult situation.

Casdon, you just reminded me of a recent conversation with a neighbour who has to free up beds in psychiatric wards. He has the difficult job of choosing who can go and dreads ending up in court being blamed for releasing someone who then does something awful. He is taking early retirement because of the stress.

In the beginning the tests were used for patients being admitted to the general hospitals so that they were placed on a ward with other people with COVID, and underwent the treatments or not as appropriate. The testing capacity was limited (remember all the problems with insufficient laboratory capacity to carry out tests), so hospitals had to make very difficult decisions. Sufficient testing capacity wasn’t available until about June I think.

Doctors on the front line had no choice Liz46. The instruction was to discharge to create more room for the patients who were flooding in at the front end of the hospital system. The patients who went to care homes weren’t fit for hotel quarantine, most of them needed full nursing care so the only available option was to return them to the homes they lived in. People who were symptomatic weren’t discharged, but many had been infected already. The care homes had inadequate PPE didn’t isolate people on discharge from hospital initially, and didn’t segregate staff who also inadvertently became infected and passed it on to others. It was a tragic situation.

I’m not sure when tests were readily available, does anyone know? My mum was discharged from hospital four or five weeks into the first lockdown and she certainly had a test before the home accepted her and then she had two weeks in isolation at the home.

Very difficult situation. The testing capacity was lacking in those early stages, while at the same time hospitals were under great pressure to admit sick covid patients - which meant that beds were at a premium, so discharging recovering patients was a choice. Decisions had to be made fast and of course some were unwise. Hindsight is helpful for the future but blame is a dodgy concept.

I suppose as Minister for Health, the buck stops with him. Nobody seems to have joined the dots when it came to sending people back into care homes. We now know what a catastrophe that was. I just hope that everyone who takes part in any investigations and inquiries concerning the pandemic are open and honest. Yes, mistakes have been made. We were dealing with an unprecedented situation but lessons need to be learned for the future. When the decision makers come out and say that tens of thousands died unnecessarily, it must be heart-breaking to those who lost a loved one.

If there weren't enough tests as MH tells us and the hospitals were close to collapse maybe the govt should have given them an alternative.

I couldn't understand why people who were well enough to be released from hospital couldn't have gone into quarantine. There were hotels lying empty all round the country, hospitality staff on furlough so why not use them? A small number of medical professionals overseeing the whole thing and homes would have been safe.