By Daniel Mumby, Local Democracy Reporter
SOMERSET Council has purchased nearly 50 new beds in nursing homes in a bid to get patients discharged from hospital quicker.
Somerset’s acute hospital wards are frequently full as a result of ‘bed blocking’ (formally known as delayed transfers of care), whereby patients cannot be discharged to a nursing home or other community facility because of the lack of space or support staff available.
To ease this problem, the council will be spending up to £2 million a year on maintaining ‘block beds’ at key locations across the county, ensuring that patients can use them when being discharged from hospital (or be sent directly to them rather than going to A&E).
The first beds will enter use in the coming months, with further negotiations on the final beds taking place over the spring and summer.
Details of the ‘block beds’ were discussed when the council’s executive committee met in Taunton on January 15.
Councillor Sarah Wakefield, portfolio holder for adult social care, said: “The Care Quality Commission requires us to manage the care market.
“Having block beds is important, otherwise we’d have to negotiate them each time on a spot basis, and that isn’t going to be the cheapest way to do it.
“We have a certain number in areas where it might be a problem getting beds – we don’t have them in every town.
“The point of this is fixing the price in the market and with that controlling the market, so we know roughly what we’ve got to spend.”
Since 2021, 16 care homes in Somerset have closed, leading to a loss of 144 general nursing placements and putting further pressure on the county’s hospitals and the local authority’s adult social care teams.
The council has purchased 39 nursing block beds under the new tenders – which will cost them £800 per week to maintain, or £1.6 million per year, from April 1.
Of these 39 beds, 23 will be based at nursing homes in Bridgwater, 11 will be in Minehead, and five will be split between Shepton Mallet and Wells.
The council intends to provide an additional ten beds in the Yeovil area, but will have to award a contract directly later this year after receiving no responses during the initial tendering period.
These ten beds will cost a further £400,000 a year to maintain, bringing the total cost to £2 million a year.
James Sangster, the council’s service manager for adults commissioning, said: “There are very few nursing homes in Yeovil and they didn’t bid this time around.
“We’re confident we will get there – we will work over the next three to six months to try and secure beds.”
New residential care homes are currently under construction in different parts of Somerset, including facilities on Highfield Road in Yeovil and on the A358 Furnham Road in Chard.
Councillor Mike Rigby, portfolio holder for economic development, planning and assets, queried whether this investment in beds was necessary given this building activity.
He said: “Doesn’t more care homes mean more places, more competition and therefore lower costs to us? If so, why are we intervening and trying to persuade people not to build them?”
Mel Lock, the council’s executive director for adult services, responded: “If we have beds that we and the public in Somerset don’t need, I can tell that people will be coming from Dorset and from other areas.
“They may pay more than us and may block these beds, and therefore the cost rises.
“This put huge strain on our health system, because once they’re in Somerset they become the responsibility of a GP in Somerset.
“What you need is the right homes that deliver the right sort of care and support that we require within Somerset.
“What I don’t want is lots of other people coming into Somerset, changing the market and therefore the cost of that going up.”