Home care company using hotels to offer live-in care is helping stop 'crisis in NHS'

In early December, NHS data recorded that on average 10,500 patients per day who were medically fit for discharge were still using a hospital bed, but one home care company is helping the NHS by giving people the "option of having live-in care in a hotel" to recuperate and have "much-needed piece of respite".

Chief executive of home care company Abicare, Anne-Marie Perry, has been contracted by the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to set up hotel facilities in her area to support people waiting for care packages to help keep the number of hospital beds free in the south and south west.

Currently, there are three hotels in the south of England being used, including one in Plymouth where it has 30 hospital patients.

Ms Perry told homecare.co.uk: “The main thing is we are helping the NHS by clearing some of the beds by giving people the option of having live-in care in a hotel before the NHS could potentially have a crisis.”

“We are not trying to be care homes,” says Ms Perry. “We are not trying to prevent care providers from being able to take their clients into the community. “This is about if you are a care provider and can’t cover all your calls, then [patients] can come into the hotel and wait until they can.

“We support patients who cannot go home for reasons such as they are waiting for their homes to be adapted or they do not have the support in place when they come out of hospital.”

’Everybody is making a system work which is effective’

This is not a new initiative for Abicare. In March 2020 when the first lockdown was put into place, CCG approached the Salisbury based company asking for their support.

“The CCG said they were thinking about taking on a hotel during the first lockdown. I used to run a nursing home, so I knew we needed a full protocol manual. We needed to know what we were doing.

“The Planning was in depth with two weeks of everyone working through the night making sure all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed and that it was safe on quality. We trained all the carers once they arrived to make sure they understand what is required of them.”

Abicare moved the trained care workers into the hotel and created a secure bubble. “We felt it was one of the safest ways to provide a service. We had no cross infection or transmission.”

Ms Perry says they have used 18 hotels since March 2020 and is becoming known as a service that can react very quickly.

“Initially the CCG sorted out the contracts to the hotels but since then, we have built relationships with these hotels so whenever asked we go and look for those hotels first as we know the layout of the floors.

“It really is very cooperative and collaborative – I’ve never had the opportunity over the last 18 months to sit in a room with the CCG, the nurse practitioner and everybody is making a system work which is effective, with the hotels and fire services coming together.”

’What are we supposed to do, leave these people in hospital and have the ambulances queuing outside?’

Ms Perry employs care workers from England as well as Europe who work in a shift pattern of three weeks on and three weeks off. She said: “We use ex-pats, but we also use care workers from all over Spain and Greece as they have rights to work and some of them come over for the winter months which suits them really well.

“All carers have full employment checks, training checks and DBS checks. We bring carers in a week early and go through full training procedures for every scenario that can exist over the last 20 months. With every patient there is a signed consent letter and is covered by our registration.”

In response to the staff shortages, Dr Jane Townson, chief executive of the Homecare Association said: “Regrettably, at a time of rapidly increasing demand, availability of homecare is currently limited by years of under investment by local government.

"Now we are facing the consequences. Careworkers are leaving in droves to better-paid jobs in retail and hospitality, which do not require vaccination. Workforce shortages are worse than anyone can remember."

Nadra Ahmed, executive chairman of the National Care Association, said: “Is home care so broken that we can’t support people in their own homes?" Ms Ahmed also described the situation of the government using "another sticking plaster.”

Social care is “absolutely broken,” says Ms Perry. “What do we need to do for the government to understand? The reason why we are doing this is care homes have got the space but haven’t got the staff because of the double vaccination requirement.

"Domiciliary care providers have lost triages of staff over the last year because of the challenges of Covid and Brexit and a lot of care staff have gone into hospitality. I understand there is a white paper and is impending, but we are dealing with the here and now. We will be running out of staff ourselves.

“What are we supposed to do just leave these people in hospital and have the ambulances queuing outside? I just don’t understand what else we can do.”

’This has saved several thousand hospital bed days’

It has been reported that at least three other care providers are considering the move to use hotels. If the providers do go down this route, Ms Perry’s advice would be to wait for the NHS to approach the provider and have a full protocol manual.

“This is not for everyone. You must have an understanding of the cohort of patients you can take. We are not providing hospital or medical care in the hotel, we are helping people who are medically fit to go home but can’t because they may need two calls per day to help them get up, dressed etc so those are the people who are stuck in hospital. It depends on whether we can get the staff.

“We are not looking at being there for two years. We are there for as long as needed whilst there is a crisis facing the NHS so we can turn this around in two weeks and we can turn it off in three or four.”

The feedback from the patients has been positive for Ms Perry. They say the hotel is a lot more “friendly than a hospital setting and more like a “community” and where the care workers can “promote independence” for the patients.

“The teams are also very happy. In an industry where the carers are demoralised and deflated and feel undervalued, we are in a little place called heaven where it gives a much-needed piece of respite in a much-needed time.”

A spokesperson for NHS Devon clinical commissioning group (CCG) said that feedback from patients has been “excellent” and since March 2020, “this has saved several thousand hospital bed days.”