Ellen Badger Hospital

Update on the community hospital inpatient review

South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust is currently undertaking a review of the inpatient beds at our community hospitals within South Warwickshire, Ellen Badger and the Nicol Unit at Stratford Hospital. The focus of this review is to ensure we are providing the services that meet the health and care needs of the people of south Warwickshire, both now and in years to come.

The first stage of the review was exploring previous, current, and future use of the community hospital beds. We have been working with Healthwatch Warwickshire to gather the views of previous and potential patients regarding the inpatient services. We are very grateful to Healthwatch and everyone who took their time to share their views and experiences. This feedback will help us to evaluate the current services in more depth and enable us to to shortlist possible future proposals which will include the potential of staying the same. There will be opportunities for future engagement with patients, carers and wide stakeholders and we undertake this process.

To access the full report published by Healthwatch click here.

We are still in the early stages of the review process, but work has been progressing. In November 2021 a technical panel, which included clinicians, therapists, operational and governance leads, staff side and HR representatives, as well as representatives from social care and Healthwatch Warwickshire, met. The role of this panel was to assess the viability of proposals taking into consideration patient safety, workforce delivery, local and national strategies and affordability. Only proposals that were felt to be viable were taken forward at this stage.

In December 2021 we then invited representatives from across the community to be involved in a community panel to further review and refine the proposals in line with what members of the community feel is important for us to think about as we progress the review. This panel had stakeholders from various voluntary organisations and community groups.

Following the community panel, the technical panel re-met in January 2022 to consider the proposals in light of the feedback from community representatives and identify which of the proposed solutions should be investigated in more depth.

A summary of the outputs of both Community and Technical panel as well as a set of recommended proposals will be presented to Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 16 February 2022. You will be able to find a full report on the Warwickshire County Council website.

Following the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee, we will know if the proposals require full consultation. This will determine the next steps as shown in a timeline here.

To facilitate the construction work that will be taking place as part of the development plans, the inpatient ward has been temporarily been re-located to Campion Ward at Leamington Spa Hospital.

· Campion Ward, Leamington Spa Hospital, Heathcote Lane, Warwick, CV34 6SR

· Tel: 01926 317700 ext 7719 or 7796

Information on hearing aid batteries

During this time you can either visit Stratford Hospital to collect batteries or ring 01926 482668 and we will post out batteries to you.

Please be aware you should have your white card available to show, if collecting batteries from Stratford Hospital.