Over 1 in 10 people needing to get into St Mary’s Hospital on the Isle of Wight have been delayed by over 12 hours, an NHS boss has said.
Joe Smyth, chief officer at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, told of ‘significant delays’ in admittances at a board-in-common meeting for the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth Hospitals University trusts this week.
Speaking at St Mary’s on Wednesday (26th August), he said ‘no criteria to reside’ levels – the amount of current patients who are medically fit to leave hospital – range between 35% to 39% of the bed base on the Island.
Mr Smyth said this is ‘clearly’ impacting the performance standards within the emergency department (ED), due to the ‘congestion problem’ in terms of exiting people from the ED.
His comments come after the Nuffield Trust, a health and social care think tank, earlier this summer flagged the continued high number of patients who experience delayed discharge from hospital as one of the ‘biggest challenges’ facing the NHS.
Mr Smyth said:
“Significant delays in people being admitted to the hospital and 14 per cent of people that needed to get into the hospital were delayed by over 12 hours, so a significant impact.
“The local authority (Isle of Wight Council) reported significant lack of capacity within the community.”
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The Isle of Wight has faced a care crisis with a severe shortage of care home beds, starkly illustrated by the sudden closure of three homes in April 2026 following the collapse of private provider Casa Di Cura.
Mr Smyth continued:
“We have stepped up the system response, and we have several meetings a week now at various levels. Last week, we had a chief executive to chief executive meeting as well to try unblock the situation.
“The key response will be developing our discharge to assess model of care which will take people out of hospital much quicker, assess them in their home and the idea being then that the package of care they end up with will be smaller than what will have been had they been in hospital.
“That releases resource back into the system which then becomes self-fulfilling because you can pull people out of the hospital.”
An Isle of Wight Council spokesperson said:
“The council is required to buy care and support in line with a number of legal frameworks.
“We continue to work with local providers to maximise the opportunities for local people whether to support with their discharge from hospital or if they need care and support in their own home or in our local communities.
“Whilst some capacity in the local care market can vary, those leaving hospital are often in need of specialist support due to complex needs that would not be able to be met within our Island resources.
“The adult social care team work with the person being discharged and their family to ensure the care and support they receive is most appropriate to their needs.
“We remain committed to working with partners to ensure that local people can leave hospital as soon as possible.”
The Council should takeover the closed care homes
employ staff to run them therefore freeing up Hospital
beds.
If you cannot employ local staff bring over families from
the mainland who can do the care jobs.