Ensuring you can get home quickly to loved ones after your stay in hospital is really important for your care and ongoing recovery. It also means that we can prepare the bed space for our next patient who needs our help.
Sometimes our patients need continued support on discharge, this might include a further period of rehabilitation which may be carried out at home or in another inpatient setting such as community ward or short stay bed. Plans may change from day to day as the ward teams match your reablement requirements with availability of community resources, for example a period in a community hospital may be planned but your health improves so that you are now able to go home with help.
Alternatively, we may not be able to source care at home immediately and a short stay bed or bed in a community ward will be offered as an interim arrangement whilst you wait for your care at home to be arranged. There is an expectation that once patients are medically fit for discharge they will accept this offered interim alternative if your care cannot be arranged immediately.
If long term care is required this will be discussed with you, and you will be given the opportunity to be referred to the Local Authority to support you with your options for discharge.
If you require a nursing or care home and your initial choice of permanent home is not available you will be offered an alternative home as an interim arrangement whilst you wait for a place to become available in your choice of home.
In making these arrangements please be assured that your health and care is the upmost importance to us as all the evidence suggests that an unnecessarily long stay in an acute hospital is detrimental to wellbeing.
