We are committed to the safest levels of care to all of our patients within the Care Homes within PRHC Group, notably Northfield, Westbourne and Newfield Care Homes. With the extreme and unique health situation currently facing all of the UK population we have had regular dialogue with Sheffield Local Authority (SCC) and Sheffield Teaching Hospital (STH) to keep up to date with all developments so that we can minimise the impact on our residents, their families and our staff. This situation has been, and will continue, developing rapidly.
Linked to this situation and in light of the recent request from STH to extend ‘winter pressure’ patients at Newfield Care Home until the end of June 2020 and the high probability of further support being required to support STH in their fight against Covid-19 we have taken the immediate decision to re-locate our Permanent, Social Care patients at Newfield across the rest of our care home group, specifically to Northfield and Westbourne. There is capacity at both of these homes to absorb all of our permanent patients from Newfield into these homes quickly and safely. The two key reasons for doing this now are driven by providing the best care for our patients, their families and our staff in an extremely unique situation and are as follows;
Firstly, the ‘winter pressure’ patients at Newfield have a much greater patient inflow/outflow than the other STH patients located at Northfield and Westbourne. The Northfield/Westbourne STH patients are in an Intermediate Care setting and being prepared for transfer back home or into a more appropriate longer term care setting whereas the ‘winter pressure’ patients are often sicker patients or simply rapid transition patients. We therefore consider Northfield and Westbourne a more stable setting for the foreseeable future
Secondly, there is a strong probability that more bed capacity will be required from PRHC by STH in respect of Covid-19 and if and when this happens there will be a heavy focus on immediacy and urgency we believe. To this end by taking this decision now we believe that we can re-locate patients in a much more controlled manner.
We recognise that this is not ideal and will have differing levels of impact on different patients and their families and that it will be stressful. However, we have balanced all of the varying factors in this unique, national situation and have taken this decision in the best interests of all of our patients, families and staff. We will provide all of the necessary support to make sure that this transition and ongoing care continues in the same high standards that we have provided for many years
Nicola Richards
Director
PRHC
19th March 2020