Legal concerns after hospital patients moved to care homes in height of pandemic
A new report looking into patients being moved from hospitals to care homes in Scotland at the height of the coronavirus pandemic has raised legal concerns – with some going beyond the early days of restrictions.
The Mental Welfare Commission’s report into decision-making for people in hospital who lack capacity studied a sample of all discharges from hospitals to care homes from March to May 2020.
Public Health Scotland said last month it “cannot rule out” a link between hospital discharges and Covid-19 outbreaks in care homes, with nearly a third of those experiencing an outbreak.
The new report, Authority To Discharge, studied the detail of 457 moves – around 10% of the number reported at the time by Public Health Scotland – and found 20 of those to have been unlawful.
According to the commission, a number of these were related to the pandemic, including a misinterpretation that the Social Work Act had been eased as a result of the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 when the legislation was never…
