Cumbrian NHS bosses calling on the community to help ease pressures

The NHS in Lancashire and south Cumbria is calling on families to help get their loved ones home from hospital quicker to reduce pressures on the health service.

As hospitals and the wider NHS are experiencing a spike in Covid-19 Omicron cases and resulting hospital admissions, bosses are calling for families to help get people who no longer need hospital treatment back home.

There are currently there large numbers of patients in hospitals across Lancashire and south Cumbria who no longer need hospital treatment but have not yet been able to leave the hospital for a range of reasons.

With the pressures and demand on services that are being experienced, the NHS is keen to make sure these people get home as soon as possible for their own benefit and that of the wider hospital too.

Andy Curran, A&E clinician and executive medical director for Lancashire and South Cumbria Health and Care Partnership, said: "We know that often, people stay longer in hospital than actually needed. As we are now directly seeing the impact of the Omicron variant, we really need support from our community to help make sure that only those people who really need to be in hospital are."

"If we can get some of our relatives to come and pick up our patients thirty minutes, an hour, or four hours earlier - it potentially means we can get a patient off the back of an ambulance, thirty minutes to four hours earlier than we would do."

Staff at the Care Partnership say they know people are busy with work, childcare, or other commitments, and it may not be convenient to collect their loved one from hospital when called but the quicker they can get someone home the quicker the bed can be made available.