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David Beattie had worked at a Nursing and Care Home in the South West that was systemically damaged and needed a complete re-boot. Prior to David and his team’s involvement, referrals to the Home had been banned by the Council.
From working in the Home, monitoring the situation, making improvements and assessing the risk, David came to the conclusion that the Home would best be served by closing the Nursing beds. The risks were too great and the nursing staff in the Home didn’t have sufficient experience to safely manage the service.
David proposed this and his reasoning why to the owners. They agreed.
David and his team set about actioning this decision as follows:
- Arranged a meeting for the nurses and informed them of the decision as this affected their future employment with the Home.
- Spoke to CQC and the Council, as well as all residents.
- Where residents lacked capacity, David and team spoke to relevant nominated representatives.
- Spoke to all relatives of the affected residents.
- Worked with the Council to compile a letter that was sent to all residents and all relatives informing them that the Council was working closely with the Home to make this happen as smoothly as possible.
- Communicated with relatives and affected residents so as to find a Nursing Home in the neighbourhood of where the resident wanted to move and/or where their family wanted the resident to move.
- Liaised with the Nursing Homes that the residents would be transferring to and ensured that the moves were as seamless and without fuss as possible.
- Ensured that all items of property belonging to each resident and their medication went with the resident.
- Relevant relatives were kept informed throughout.
- Guided the nurses through their redundancy process and made the nursing posts redundant.
Once this was completed, the Homes occupancy had been reduced to 33%.
Despite the issues created by Covid, over the next few months, David worked with the Registered Manager to build the occupancy back up. After a while, the occupancy reached 74%, which was critical as the owners target for breakeven occupancy was 64%.