Plans to close 32 acute hospital beds at Torbay Hospital have been announced.
The announcement comes less than two weeks after confirmation that four community hospitals in the area would close.
Paignton, Dartmouth Ashburton and Bovey Tracey community hospitals are set for closure, which will see a loss of over 40 beds. More here: https://wearesouthdevon.com/south-devon-hospitals-close/
Liz Davenport, Chief Operations Manager said in an online Statement yesterday:
“As you know, our vision is to support more and more people to remain at home, or return quicker if they do need a hospital stay, and to do this we need to focus more of our resource on community services. It has always been our plan as part of these arrangements to close some acute and community beds.
“Our new care model is based on increasing our capacity to provide community-based care, and to reduce people’s reliance on bed-based care. We have taken big steps towards achieving this in recent months, with our £2.31m investment in enhanced intermediate care and the voluntary sector through the appointment of Wellbeing Co-ordinators. We have always planned to have this community care up and running before we closed any acute or community beds.
“We now believe that the time is right to plan to close 32 acute beds. Before we can close any acute beds, we will need to have in place elsewhere the clinical expertise to care for patients currently occupying these beds. As an Executive Team we are working with clinical and operational leads to assess the options to achieve this,”
For the full statement, click here.
It is not yet known which wards are being considered for closure. No formal decisions will be made until the end of this month.
You can join us on our social media pages, follow us on Facebook or Twitter and keep up to date with whats going on in South Devon. Got a news story, blog or press release that you’d like to share? Contact us
