healthmedicinet

Other Whitehall sources have also indicated support for the concept of patient
hotels.

Bed blocking refers to patients, many of them elderly, who no longer require
the specialist medical attention that a hospital provides but who need more
support than can be given at home.

They may have dementia and have been injured in a fall, or be waiting for a
place in a nursing home. About 30,000 patients each year are kept in
hospital despite being well enough to be discharged.

According to government estimates, such a patient costs the NHS about £260 a
day.

The total bill for these delayed discharges has been estimated at £4?million a
week and has been increasing at a time when NHS budgets are under intense
pressure.

Charities fear that bed blocking is growing because councils have cut funding
for home helps and care homes, leaving elderly patients in hospital when
they should be looked after in their communities. The cost of accommodating
a patient in a hotel, even one staffed by trained carers and fitted with
medical equipment, would be significantly lower, according to advocates of
the scheme.

In Scandinavia, privately run patient hotels are situated in the grounds of
hospitals, where they are staffed by nurses and afford quick access to
specialist consultants if patients need urgent treatment.

Supporters of the system say that the NHS’s cultural resistance to the private
sector has been a barrier to adopting the model more widely.

Chains such as Travelodge could be approached to collaborate on the
developments. In America, Marriott and Hilton already operate hotels for
patients and families attending nearby medical facilities.

University College Hospital in London has established an accommodation unit
where family members can stay and there are plans for patient hotels in
Worcester and the South West, although none has so far been opened.

In Nottinghamshire, a plan is being drawn up for a hotel for patients with
mental health conditions.

In a letter to Baroness Greengross, a cross-bench peer who has investigated
the issue, Lord Howe said that he was examining whether “the Scandinavian
model of hospital hotels” could provide care to older people in England.

Local NHS commissioning groups had the “freedom and responsibility” to develop
their own “innovative” ways to ensure patients recover quickly from
treatment in hospital, he said. But the NHS Commissioning Board, now known
as NHS England, provided the local bodies with guidance and support, he
added.

“The board would welcome the opportunity to review this model alongside the
suite of other potential best practice resources,” the minister said.

Baroness Greengross, an expert in elderly care, said that some hospitals were
already prepared to embrace a patient hotel system “but they are not doing
it on the scale or as well as Scandinavia”.

Unused NHS buildings on hospital campuses could be converted by hotel
companies, she said. “The idea is that if you go into hospital and you don’t need
acute care, which a lot of old people particularly don’t, or you’ve had a difficult
pregnancy and you need access to specialist care but you don’t need it most
of the time, you are immediately moved out of a hospital to something run by
a hotel.

“It is of course much cheaper than being in a hospital. The family can help
because they can go in at any time because you’re in a private room.”

Nick Seddon, the deputy director of the think tank Reform, also backed patient
hotels.

“A major lesson here for the NHS is about service,” he said. “I think we stuff
people away wherever we can fit them and this is a major challenge.

“It is a really obvious way to treat patients with proper dignity and respect
and in a manner that is up-to-date with the modern consumer world. It
happens to be cheaper to treat people in a patient hotel than in a hospital
ward.”

Mr Seddon, who has stayed at a patient hotel in Finland while attending a
conference, said his room contained a flat-screen television, minibar and
walk-in shower.

He had access to all the services usually associated with a hotel, including a
restaurant serving “good food and wine” and 24-hour room service. “It was
just so far away from the experience of being a patient in the NHS,” he
said.

“It was like staying in a proper hotel, it just happens to be that a lot of
people there were in wheelchairs or with bandages on rather than business
suits.”

In Sweden, the first patient hotels opened in 1988, designed by Lund
University Hospital and the hotel chain SAS. They were created as safe,
comfortable spaces where patients could largely manage their own care.

According to a report from the Innovation Unit think tank, patient hotels in
Norway and Denmark save up to 60 per cent on the cost of accommodating a
patient on a hospital ward.