Kent hospital tries to charge pensioner £582 for a bed – as the NHS crumbles under pressure of flu-nami
An NHS hospital crippled by flu threatened to charge a pensioner £582 a night if she refused to give up her bed to another patient.
A ‘gobsmacked’ visitor to the ward told how a gang of four hospital staff ‘surrounded’ the woman and tried to intimidate her into leaving.
She is understood to have emphysema and a chest infection, ‘looked like she weighed 5 stone’ and said she lived alone.
Despite pleas to give her time to arrange care and transport, workers at The Princess Royal, in Orpington, Kent, told her she must pay up or leave.
Patient groups today hit out at the ‘strong-arm tactics’ used to free-up the bed and described the behaviour of hospital staff as ‘callous’.
A spokesman for the hospital has since apologised for any ‘confusion or distress caused’ and admitted staff were wrong to suggest the patient would be charged.
It comes as the NHS struggles to cope with a surge in demand amid plummeting temperatures and a major flu outbreak.
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which runs The Princess Royal, has seen the number of beds occupied by flu patients quadruple over the past month.
Despite pleas to give her time to arrange care and transport, workers at The Princess Royal, in Orpington, Kent (pictured), told her she must pay up or leave
The latest figures from NHS England show the Trust had an average of 52 beds a day filled with flu patients in the last week of December – up from just 12 a month earlier.
It has also struggled with bed-blockers.
The Mail told earlier this month how the equivalent of 26 hospitals a day are filled with patients who are medically fit for discharge but are unable to leave – often because of delays securing a place in a care home or arranging care in the patient’s own home.
The crisis costs the NHS around £2billion a year.
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust had an average of 88 bed-blockers per night throughout December – up from 82 in November.
On a typical day last month, there were 202 patients considered ready for discharge but only 114 vacated their bed – giving a discharge rate of just 56 per cent.
The lack of available beds is hampering efforts to admit new patients to the Trust, with more than one in four ambulances (27 per cent) taking longer than 30 minutes to handover patients to A&E over Christmas and New Year.
Dennis Reed, director of Silver Voices, which campaigns for elderly patients, said: ‘An old, frail and sick lady, with no social care support at home, being threatened with a huge penalty fine if she does not relinquish her bed, says it all about the critical state of the NHS and the lack of empathy of some hospital managers.
‘This callous behaviour in one Trust may be the tip of the iceberg in terms of the strong-arm tactics being used to free up hospital beds.
’At the end of the day, the responsibility comes back to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who has kicked reform of social care into the long grass, ensuring that many more older patients will be forced back to home with non-existent support available to help their recovery.
‘Instead of being “ashamed” Wes Streeting must act to stop such bully-boy tactics being used in the future.’
A spokesman for the Trust told the Mail: ‘Yesterday, when speaking to a fit for discharge patient about their hospital stay, staff incorrectly suggested that the patient would be charged for the ongoing cost of their hospital bed.
‘We can confirm that this is absolutely not the case, and we would like to apologise for any confusion or distress caused.
‘Like other hospitals, charging patients would only ever be considered as a potential option in very rare and exceptional circumstances, and in such cases where a patient with no further medical needs has repeatedly, and over a concerted period of time, refused to leave hospital, despite being well enough to do so, and having the appropriate support mechanisms in place for their ongoing care.’
