Small surge hubs set up in the grounds of hospitals so staff, equipment and emergency departments are close at hand does seem to be the way go go, rather than the huge Nightingale hospitals we built last year, where staffing was a problem.
Some background: early in 2020 the UK built seven ‘Nightingale’ Hospitals rapidly from scratch, converting conference and concert venues into places that could deliver complex critical care, safely store and deliver oxygen to patients and support infection control. The wider infrastructure that hospitals need was also puy in place – from financing, to clinical governance processes, to ensuring there would be food and drink available to staff. There were former military hospitals reopened for rehabilitation care too. The largest of the Nightingales were set up for 4000 patients each. Here is a [time-lapse of one of the largest Nightingale Hospitals being built](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52112652) – at Excel in London. It took nine days from start to finish. The time-lapse covers five of the days.
The problem was, *more than 16,000 staff were needed at full capacity for every 4000 beds*. They ended up little used as major hospitals preferred to hold on to staff to deal with Covid pressures there rather than lend them to the Nightingales.
A year after they were built, most were decommissioned or repurposed as mass vaccination centres or diagnostic centres after a total spend of £530M, although the rehabilitation hospital near where I live (formery a military rehabilitation hospital) has remained open, helping people function again after long periods having intensive care.
What I hate is that every smart ass is talking about the beds. The beds are irrelevant. The army has enough beds technically usable for this purpose. What is needed is medical personnel and you can go look for it up and down the country and you won’t find it.
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So mild…
Small surge hubs set up in the grounds of hospitals so staff, equipment and emergency departments are close at hand does seem to be the way go go, rather than the huge Nightingale hospitals we built last year, where staffing was a problem.
Some background: early in 2020 the UK built seven ‘Nightingale’ Hospitals rapidly from scratch, converting conference and concert venues into places that could deliver complex critical care, safely store and deliver oxygen to patients and support infection control. The wider infrastructure that hospitals need was also puy in place – from financing, to clinical governance processes, to ensuring there would be food and drink available to staff. There were former military hospitals reopened for rehabilitation care too. The largest of the Nightingales were set up for 4000 patients each. Here is a [time-lapse of one of the largest Nightingale Hospitals being built](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52112652) – at Excel in London. It took nine days from start to finish. The time-lapse covers five of the days.
The problem was, *more than 16,000 staff were needed at full capacity for every 4000 beds*. They ended up little used as major hospitals preferred to hold on to staff to deal with Covid pressures there rather than lend them to the Nightingales.
A year after they were built, most were decommissioned or repurposed as mass vaccination centres or diagnostic centres after a total spend of £530M, although the rehabilitation hospital near where I live (formery a military rehabilitation hospital) has remained open, helping people function again after long periods having intensive care.
What I hate is that every smart ass is talking about the beds. The beds are irrelevant. The army has enough beds technically usable for this purpose. What is needed is medical personnel and you can go look for it up and down the country and you won’t find it.