Patients at St Mary’s Hospital look set to be transferred to mainland hospitals such as Lymington to help free up beds locally, Island Echo can reveal.
Yesterday (Tuesday) the Isle of Wight NHS Trust declared a Critical Incident due to the extreme pressures on health services at the moment.
As part of this incident, the Trust has been exploring all options to reduce the demand on services and support patients’ needs safely and effectively.
Plans have been drawn up to transfer patients from St Mary’s Hospital to the mainland, with hospitals such as Lymington being readied to receive some of the Isle of Wight’s inpatients.
It has been confirmed to Island Echo that a small number of suitable patients look set to be transferred across the Solent today (Wednesday) to improve capacity at St Mary’s.
NHS leaders on the Island are calling on people to only go to the Emergency Department (ED) if they are experiencing a life-threatening illness or injury.
Members of the public can help by:
- Collecting family and friends from hospital as soon as they are ready to be discharged, to free up beds for those who need them.
- Visit NHS 111 online or call NHS 111 for heath advice, or alternatively contact your local pharmacist or GP.
- Think about the most appropriate NHS service for your needs and to only call 999 in the event of a life-threatening illness or injury.
- Stay away from our hospitals if you have COVID symptoms, or are in contact of someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
149 new houses to be built at Gunville, mmm.
So much money wasted on mental health now that there’s not enough to provide for real illnesses
Why do you keep trotting out this stupid four point plan for the public to “help”? You cannot get to see a GP when you are ill, NHS111 is worse than useless and people have to go somewhere when they need medical help. If you want to ease the strain on the hospital, get GP’s working again seeing patients face to face, instead of hiding away and trying to treat people over the phone. Wake up.
How many times is this in the past few months? Three?
‘the Trust has been exploring all options to reduce the demand on services’ Here’s an idea, buy some more beds and employ some more nurses – reduce the number of managers if you need to balance the books.
It’s not exactly rocket science, is it? You can’t just lurch from one crisis to the next. Assume they’ll be more demand for hospital beds in Autumn and Winter, it happens every year, so plan ahead.
So what happened to the Nightingale unit set up for Covid?. Moving patients is not the answer, costly and family can’t afford to visit across to mainland. Why are the Isle of Wight council doing nothing to help older folk get discharged,the council forcibly closed down so many homes instead of investing and support them, now not only do we as tax payers have to pay financial cost but hugely emotional one as well!. Why ?.IWC get on with it,stop having meeting after meeting talking about it – your staff are also at breaking point and not coping with workload.
Care Homes lost staff due to being made to have covid vaccinations to keep jobs
Because care homes cost the council more money, it’s sadly not about care but money
Nightingale hospitals were all fake PR fear mongering. It seems the government/NHS aren’t interested in our health at all. The GPs are still hiding away and making a fortune from consulting people via an app. 2022 just keeps giving
So if you break a bone or chop off your finger, stay away from hospital, what a bloody joke… Diabolical situation.
So will these patients be repatriated back to the island free of charge? Unlike myself who 3 years ago was told by The Queen Alexandra Hospital to make my own way back as it was my fault I chose to live on the Isle of Wight. That was after having 3 stents inserted into my heart arteries the day before.
This happened to my sister also, taken to Portsmouth as an emergency in a hospital gown only, fitted with heart stents then released 48 hours later to return home by her own steam. I had to drive from London with a set of clothes & drive her home on the ferry
It was your choice to move to the Isle of Wight, unless “Proud Ovener” isn’t the obvious spelling mistake it seems to be and actually is something to do with ovens. The correct word for someone who moved to the Island from the mainland is “overner”.
Too many people move here without considering the implications. You appear to be one of them.
So sorry to upset you by missing the “r” out of Overner. Just shows your mentality over something so unimportant. However I would have thought that for such a large hospital as St Mary’s it would have had a cardiac ward by now instead of mental health wards for someone like yourself.
You really aren’t very bright, are you?
St Mary’s DOES have a cardiac ward. They don’t do stents though. That is because there aren’t that many surgeons who are qualified to do them. It is more efficient to do them all in one place (QA) rather than wasting time having surgeons traipse around the country to backwater hospitals for you convenience.
Unlike REAL islanders, you CHOSE to live here. If you don’t like it then pee off back where you came from.
This is an absolute disgrace. The powers that be have been aware for not weeks or months but years that the Island did not have capacity but yet they continued to close beds!
I pity the poor patients who are being shunted to the mainland and their families or are they picking people who have no family?
Please explain how to run a ward without trained staff.
That is the problem.
Remember this when nurses take industrial action. If you don’t support them more will leave and more wards will close.
Your choice.
Who is being sent to Lymington I wonder? Are these patients chosen by their condition?
No details which is a bit frustrating don’t you think?
Lymington New Forest Hospital? Situated on a remote industrial estate about a mile or more from the ferry terminal. Poorly served by public transport ( bus service every two or three hours during the day) and the most unreliable and frequently cancelled cross Solent ferry service. Not to mention being forced to use Yarmouth’s expensive council car park. No thank you!!
What has happened to the £10,000,000 we sent to QA at Portsmouth to pay for beds for the Island to use??
The problem is not so much the beds – although they haven’t got any spare, the real problem is the lack of trained staff for the hospital. If you have a medical qualification they will take you regardless of any other problem you might have.
They have set their numbers of beds to be at a ratio of the staff they have, but this week it’s half term and staff with children want that time off. So it’s critical incident time and they can say it’s down to lack of bed space (Government problem) and not lack of staff (Local management problem).
No ! the root cause of this is not being able to dischage patients back into the community ( read care homes) because they are either FULL OR the council are not able / can’t pay the high fees required in the private sector so the poor pitients get stuck in hospital in reasonably good health. I don’t see it as the fault of the hospital. Yes, it will slowly but surely get worse as the IOW population increases- be it naturally or by way of ‘imports’.
I wonder how the government are doing with Boris the liar’s 40 Hospital pledge?
I think it’s terrible.
At least the patients will receive better care.
St Mary’s is not fit for purpose.
The sooner the NHS is privatised the better.
Privatisation is the only way this poor excuse of an Hospital will improve.
Sack all the slackers and bring in some quality staff.
Privatised like the water companies, the energy suppliers and the cross-Solent ferries.
Yes and the isle of wight council can help by not green lighting large housing developments until they green light a new hospital or more care facilities for these so called bed blockers that still need care but are treated like second class citzens.
And the government and IOW want to keep building more and more houses putting even more pressure on the hospital, schools etc and you can put money on the fact that they won’t be affordable absolute joke
Time to build a bridge, it will save lives.
Ambulances can drive straight to decent Hospitals on the
Mainland
Perhaps if families took in their infirm relatives rather than leaving it to the state to sort out we would have more capacity. The usual excuses of ‘i have kids’ or ‘i have to go to work’ always get trotted out…the values of the english masses compared to our european counterparts leave much to be desired.
Why not Portsmouth? What did we pay 10 million pounds for?
It’s a wonder there s a ferry running to do the cross Solent journey
TRANSFER TO LYMINGTON? FERRIES NOT RUNNING!!!