FAILURE to address issues with bed blocking will cause problems even after a new larger emergency department opens at Royal Bournemouth Hospital, a health boss has warned.

Problems with the delayed discharge of patients who are medically fit to go home has been one of the biggest challenges facing the area’s hospitals in recent times.

Work is still on track to open a new emergency department at Royal Bournemouth Hospital which will be double the size of the present departments at the site and Poole Hospital combined.

Richard Renaut, University Hospitals Dorset chief strategy and transformation officer, provided a warning about the current extremely high occupancy rates.

At a recent BCP Council health and adult social care overview and scrutiny meeting, he was asked for his take on if the capacity outlined in the clinical services review in Dorset would stack up for BCP Council residents when all of the new facilities come online in the coming years.

“In terms of the basic premises of elective and emergency care being split, I think that has been absolutely reenforced as a result of the pandemic,” Mr Renaut.

“We actually visited a hospital system in Gwent, Wales, where they did that just at the beginning of the Covid pandemic and they were able to keep operating and running those services all the way through the pandemic, so I think the basic models correct.

“In terms of if the capacity right, we do know that at this stage we have around 200 plus patients who are medically ready for discharge, who are actually at risk of harm from being inside our hospital when rehabilitation at home or being in a community setting would be better.

“If we don’t resolve that, if we don’t make progress on that, then there is a risk we will be running at the same occupancy levels as we are today, which is too high.”

Work at both hospitals is still on track and budget despite Covid, energy and inflation issues, the committee was told.

Poole Hospital’s first phase of development will see four new theatres open in the spring, while Royal Bournemouth Hospital’s BEACH building (Births, Emergency care, And, Critical care and child Health) is on track to be open at the end of 2024.

Once complete Poole Hospital will become the base for elective care, with an urgent treatment centre still on site, and Royal Bournemouth Hospital will become Dorset’s major emergency hospital.

Mr Renaut said the plans for transformation at the two hospitals aimed for an occupancy rate of 88 per cent occupancy rate.

At present the hospital is running near 98 per cent with “absolutely no wriggle room”.

“One of the issues that that creates is getting you the bed in the right time, in the right speciality is virtually impossible, so every day is a jigsaw possible to get patients in and as a result ambulance handovers take longer – the whole system is snarled up,” Mr Renaut said.

“The answer is we have probably got enough physical beds. If we had more, we would struggle to staff them anyway but there is not much point building a hospital facility for patients who shouldn’t be there. That would be designing in failure.

“That remains a risk and the contingency there is really to make sure, working with our colleagues, front door the services work really, really well and we don’t admit people who don’t need to be admitted and then the overall process works better.”

Mr Renaut said work on same day emergency care will make a huge difference if staff are able to get all a patient’s care decisions and diagnostics completed in the first 24 hours of them arriving at hospital.

The hospital director said this was often taking three to four days at the moment.

He compared this to the impact day surgery had on elective care 30 years ago.