COLUMN: Our plans are in place for winter - by Dr Suneil Kapadia

Staff at Boston’s Pilgrim Hospital have worked really hard to prepare for winter and I’m pleased our plans are in place.

We’ve re-opened all the beds here and received more than £1m from our trust board to effectively staff these beds.

Last month, we opened eight frailty beds on the sixth floor and introduced a new way of working led by our frailty consultants.

Patients are seen and assessed and, if they require a short stay admission, they are moved to the sixth floor for 72 hours. This quick turn-around helps patients to recover more quickly and to return home.

We’ve also invested in a new way of managing patient movement at Pilgrim, which helps to ensure all our patients are discharged in a timely way.

This new way of working at ward level consists of:

l A daily board round before 10am to review the sickest patients as a priority and the discharges for the day

l A ward round by midday to review clinical plans

l A confirm, check and challenge meeting by 2.30pm to ensure the plan and tasks made on the morning ward round are effectively completed in the same day.

Doing this helps to put a plan in place to discharge patients. This new approach is a major investment to help ensure we meet our winter challenges.

We’re also creating a planned investigations unit for integrated medicine by refurbishing two bays on ward 8B to help relieve pressure elsewhere in the hospital. By moving the unit, this will allow more patients to be seen and treated.

To all our staff and patients I wish you a very happy and healthy new year.

Dr Suneil Kapadia is medical director of United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust