Ellesmere nursing home: We can help bed crisis
Trustees from a community nursing home say they can help ease the current NHS bed-blocking crisis.
Ellesmere Community Nursing Home, the former cottage hospital, is now run by a community trust after residents helped to raise £250,000 to buy the building back from the NHS more than 20 years ago.
Trust chairman Mike Sleigh said the trust had approached the Clinical Commissioning Group suggesting a partnership agreement to ease Shropshire's bed-blocking pressures.
"We have eight beds in the nursing home, right in the heart of Ellesmere, and we believe if the NHS used our beds as an alternative to patients remaining in acute hospital beds, it would be an extremely beneficial arrangement," Mr Sleigh said.
"Our facilities allow patients from the Ellesmere area to recuperate in a nursing environment that's close to their families and friends, and there is also a fully operational on-site medical practice adjacent to our building.
"We're urging the local health authority to consider using community facilities for patients who are well enough to leave hospital, but not yet well enough to go home, as a direct alternative to blocking expensive acute beds."
Mr Sleigh said the Trust had also expressed an interest to Shropshire Council to provide rehabilitation facilities as and when required.
"Our nursing home beds fill the void in north Shropshire between Whitchurch and Oswestry, and using them would allow patients to return to their local community yet still receive the very highest levels of care on their own doorstep."
Ellesmere Community Nursing Home was established in 1994, and is a not-for- profit making organisation managed by the Ellesmere Community Care Centre Trust. It provides clinical and personal care for elderly patients, and for patients who need palliative care who are not yet able to return home.
"The site of the former cottage hospital is also the location of Ellesmere Medical Centre and Shropshire Council's Meres Day Centre, providing integrated community primary care services on a single site," Mr Sleigh said.
Dr Finola Lynch, GP Governing Body Member for NHS Shropshire Clinical Commissioning Group said:
"As commissioners, we want to see community services that enable patients to receive the best possible care, closer to home. Only those patients that need specialist acute care should be in a main hospital. Getting patients back into their own home and local community, where possible, is the best place for the vast majority of people. The CCG is working with partners across the county to look at the local community services we commission."
