THE care hotel initiative at University Hospitals Dorset (UHD) will finish at the end of March. 

Introduced to ease bed blocking, the care hotel which opened in January, will close in two weeks time.

The facility was opened to help some of the 200 patients medically fit for discharge to leave Bournemouth and Poole hospitals.

However, despite it's "successful" roll-out, the number of patients in both hospitals remains the same. 

Sophie Jordan, associate director of operations at UHD, said: “We put it in to try and support 16-ish patients going out of the hospital who are awaiting a package of care or something similar.

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“So these are reasonably well patients that are waiting for a care package who can be looked after by a private company with our support."

The care of the patients, who are only there short term, is handled by Abicare, a CQC registered care provider already running similar services in four hotels in other parts of the country.

Ms Jordan said the initiative had been "reasonably successful" and has "supported" the hospital during the winter period.

Looking ahead she said: “We’ll certainly look at it next year for our winter planning and again we might consider different venues depending on size and who we deliver it to.”