Hospital bed stories 'untrue' (From Tivyside Advertiser)

Hospital bed stories 'untrue'

1:31pm Wednesday 20th March 2013 in News

Stories that the new Cardigan Hospital will have only 12 beds are untrue, according to health chiefs.

Concerns about the number of beds at the new facility, set to be built at Bath-house, were raised by Beulah Community Council.

“The number of beds will be based on patient need and I cannot say at the moment what that figure will be,” said Jeremy Brown, Ceredigion director of Hywel Dda Health Board.

Speaking at last week’s meeting of the county committee of the Community Health Council, he added: “The number 20 keeps coming up, because that is what we had before. Now we are down to 12 at the old hospital.

“But as I told the last stakeholder meeting we cannot yet answer the question about number of beds in the new premises. I can say that the average length of stay at Cardigan Hospital is down from 63 days to 31, which is good.”

Mr Brown said: “We need to build the place to serve the population who need GPs, and base the development on, for example,  how many blood tests we are going to do, how many outpatients clinics we need, and yes, how many beds we will need. This all needs to be demonstrated by our research and it will be. We also have to consider facilities for such things as chemotherapy and ophthalmology.”

He added: “We have got to get the model right and we will have beds based on patient need, not on what we have done in the past.”

Dr Gabrielle Heathcote said: “The public tend to measure a hospital in terms of the number of beds, but it is important now to move perception away from bed numbers as the only benchmark of viability. It is a major task to move minds and attitudes.”

Beulah Commuity Council will be invited to send a representative to the next meeting of the hospital stakeholder group.