My father-in-law is disabled because of an über-rare disorder caused by a brain tumor when he was a child.  He is now deaf, has no balance and has no short-term memory.  My mother-in-law is his carer – he can’t go out without a wheelchair any more, he doesn’t feel pain and if left to his own devices he would either eat 10 times in a day or not eat at all because he can’t remember if he’s eaten even a few minutes after doing so.

My father-in-law has fallen over 4 times today and cut his head open which required stitches.  Caring for an adult is hard work as I’m sure you’ll apppreciate and it’s important she gets a break once in a while.  Last year she didn’t get one but this month it’s her 50th birthday so she’s booked to go away to a hotel for a weekend with my wife and some friends and relatives.

She booked my father-in-law in for a couple of days of respite care months ago at the only respite care room in the whole of Telford that will take under-60’s.  One room for a town with a population of around 160,000 people.  This morning social services phoned her to say they had cancelled the booking because the hospital in Telford is full and they’re sending their patients to the care home that the respite room is in and they’re going to use the respite room.

The reason why the hospital in Telford is full is because the hospital in nearby Shrewsbury has closed three wards because of an outbreak of norovirus.  This wouldn’t be a problem if Telford hospital wasn’t already full because it’s winter and there’s been a minor flu epidemic in the county.  So Shrewsbury hospital are paying Telford hospital to look after their patients while Telford hospital is paying private care homes in Telford to look after their patients.  But what really takes the piss is that social services in Telford have offered to put my father-in-law into respite for the same dates that they’ve just cancelled in Telford – in a home on the other side of Shrewsbury!

If Shrewsbury hospital is full and Telford hospital is full but the care homes in Shrewsbury aren’t then why is the hospital in Shrewsbury sending their patients to Telford instead of sending them to the care homes in Shrewsbury?  And why aren’t they cancelling elective surgery in Oswestry hospital which is run by the hospital in Shrewsbury and sending their patients there?  The hospital in Oswestry no longer has an A&E department, a sizeable proportion of their patients aren’t emergency cases and could wait a few weeks – as inconvenient as that is – while the current crisis is dealt with.

This is the problem when a service is run like a business – people lose out when there’s a profit to be made.  I wouldn’t mind so much if Telford and Shrewsbury hospitals weren’t run by the same Primary Care Trust.

Technorati Tags: Telford, Shrewsbury, Hospital