THE head of NHS Ayrshire and Arran has admitted that attempts to free up hospital beds have been stalled by the latest Covid outbreak.

Chief executive Claire Burden told Ayrshire and Arran health board that a lot of work had been undertaken to bring the number of delayed discharges down from its January peak of 160.

This improvement has been driven by a successful recruitment drive by South Ayrshire Council, where the reliance on private sector care saw the area record significantly higher delayed discharge figures than neighbouring North and East Ayrshire.

Unfortunately, just as South Ayrshire efforts showed positive signs by bringing delayed discharges back down below 100, an episode of Covid threw a spanner in the works.

Ms Burden said: “We have had a difficult March, there are two factors at play. As we came through January, our length of stays in hospitals had extended and our delayed discharges had peaked.

“A lot of work had to be put in place to bring that down. South Ayrshire Council has had a positive recruitment drive that meant delayed discharges had come down at the beginning of March.

“We hope to do more work as they are still at 90, but it is positive to get them below that 100 marker.”

However, the Covid outbreak saw hospital occupancy increase by 10 per cent in just one week at the end of February.

Ms Burden said that this increase had proved difficult to reverse.

She said: “The national public health forecast was that we could expect to have to 100 Covid patients in our system, but I had hoped that may be overegged. But there are actually more than 100 Covid patients in our hospitals.

“It also impacts our staff, with over 150 members off work with Covid.”

She said that the outbreak had impacted the rate of recovery and their ability to reduce occupancy.

While the summer months generally mean lower Covid rates, Ms Burden said that it would continue to pose a risk as holidays bring about a ‘whole new mix of social movement’.

“This will impact our ability to keep Covid numbers down,” she said.

She explained that a major part of NHS Ayrshire and Arran’s work is around reducing the number of unfunded beds.

She admitted that it ‘sounds counterintuitive’ but pointed out the additional beds were only brought in to deal with infection control during the height of the pandemic.

Now that the need for such stringent controls has passed, the additional beds are making the service less efficient.

She said: “The additional beds were a response to infection control.

“As Covid only accounts for 10 per cent, our ambition is to reduce the additional unfunded beds in the system so our workforce is not spread so thinly.”

Ms Burden added that the pressure on the emergency department is reliant on the flow of patients through the system.

She said that this was being helped by the removal of additional beds, the improvements in care available in communities and good relations with partners.

The chief executive also thanked the general public for making more use of primary care to reduce the impact on hospital acute care.

“I am grateful for the public’s for their support for utilisation of primary care. Our primary care partners are seeing significant contacts, both face-to-face and virtually. Those avenues help us make sure the right people get to hospital."

She concluded: “It will take several weeks, but we are determined that our occupancy [reduction] is the place where we will get the greatest gains for the public.”