Extra nursing beds on way at Hawick care home to ease pressure on hospitals treating Covid-19 patients

Those 14 extra beds on the top floor of the Scottish Borders Council-run home – available from Monday, April 27 – will ease bed-blocking issues at the general hospital and NHS Borders’ community hospitals across the region to help the health board cope with the current influx of Covid-19 sufferers requiring treatment.

They won’t be occupied by patients being treated for coronavirus but, rather, by those deemed to be well but unable to be discharged because there are not enough nursing home beds in community settings available for them at present.

Once at the Roadhead home, they will be looked after until they are assessed to have recovered sufficiently to either go home or move on to an alternative care provider.

The new nursing bed provision will be staffed by a mix of NHS Borders nurses and SB Cares support workers employed by the council.

Council chief executive Tracey Logan said: “Working together with our health partners, we have decided to use the spare capacity at Deanfield Care Home to provide much-needed nursing beds for those well enough to be discharged from hospital.

“We expect these extra beds to be of significant help to colleagues working to maintain capacity at the Borders General Hospital and support their Covid-19 response.

“We are pleased to have been able to help out with what is true integrated working between care and nursing staff.”

Nicky Berry, director of nursing, midwifery and acute services at NHS Borders, added: “The creation of this facility enables our patients to receive care in the right place to meet their needs.

“It is a testament to our health and social care staff across NHS Borders and Scottish Borders Council that we have been able to make this happen.”

Council bosses are confident the plans, approved by the Care Inspectorate, will have no impact on 17 residents currently being looked after on the ground floor at Deanfield as measures will be put in place to ensure that the two operations are kept separate, they say.

At the moment, 40 patients are being treated for either confirmed or suspected coronavirus at hospitals in the Borders, four of them in intensive care beds.

All but six have tested positive for the disease, with the others currently awaiting results.

A £2.8m revamp of Deanfield, a 35-bed home opened in 1987, to convert it into five domestic-style homes, creating a Dutch-style care village, was agreed in September.