HEALTH boards across Scotland have been ordered to review discharge plans to see if hospital patients can be sent home sooner as the NHS continues to come under “severe” pressure, Nicola Sturgeon said.
The First Minister said that NHS boards have until the end of this month to review their discharge plans.
Sturgeon spoke of her concerns that accident and emergency waiting times remain “far higher than they should be”, saying these have been exacerbated by capacity issues at hospitals.
She also told journalists at a Scottish Government briefing in Edinburgh that the current pressures on the NHS “are having an adverse impact on too many” patients.
However, she said some of those pressures had eased slightly, saying the situation in A&E departments was “stabilising” while calls to NHS24 are down on the previous week.
Despite this, the health service is still under “intense” pressure, with Sturgeon saying the Scottish Government “remains focused” on helping the health service navigate the crisis.
She said: “Despite some very initial indications of a very slight easing of some winter pressure in the past week, hospital occupancy is still very high at this stage.
“In summary, therefore, pressure remains intense but we do hope to see a further easing of it in the weeks ahead.
“And of course, we remain focused on supporting the service to address these pressures.”
"That is caused to a very significant extent by the fact that hospitals remain very full," she added.
To tackle the problems the Scottish Government last week announced an additional £8 million to buy care home beds, in a bid to free up spaces in hospitals.
Sturgeon added that following this announcement, Health and Social Care partnerships have been working with care home providers to "identify available beds and match them with patients as appropriate".
The £8m, which Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said last week would be taken from elsewhere in the Health and Social Care budget portfolio, will be used to "buy out" around 300 beds at an enhanced rate, for around six months, to allow patients to receive "interim care" while support packages are put in place.
And, this week the FM said health boards are now being “asked to review before the end of January all discharge plans in acute and community hospitals to identify patients who should be discharged more quickly”.
This action could “help resolve any issues that may be preventing their discharge from hospital”, the First Minister added.
With three health boards – including Scotland’s largest NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde – also having paused elective surgeries, Sturgeon said work was being done with the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank and others to increase capacity for elective surgeries to minimise the knock-on pressure on waiting times.
"That will include weekday and weekend capacity and support specialty such as ophthalmology, orthopaedics and general surgery," she added.
The FM also said that as a result of further negotiations, the "propsect of any immediate strike action in NHS Scotland has been removed".
She said: "It's hard to overstate the importance of that.
"I don't want NHS staff to feel the need to strike at any time, but the impact on patients and indeed on staff in this period of acute pressure would have been especially difficult.
"I want to thank health trade unions for agreeing to move forward quickly."
