A WARRINGTON Hospital ward is being used as a model for rehabilitating patients who are medically fit but not yet ready to go home.

The short term assessment and rehabilitation (STAR) ward consists of 25 beds for patients who are medically ready to be discharged from the hospital but need to use services in order to recuperate fully.

Patients are mainly elderly although they have been as young as 34, and spend two to three weeks on the ward to get back on their feet – it is seen as a step down from hospital care and a step closer to home.

Now hospitals in London, Salford and Telford are now working with the ward as they look to establish similar schemes of their own.

Ward manager Helen Farrelly-Daly said: “A lot of elderly people want to go home in their own environment and they want to feel safe.

“Some families say to us they didn’t even think their relative would leave hospital – there was one gentleman who would reach a stable position and then suddenly go poorly again.

“We managed that and got a lot of community services on board and we got him home – we got a lovely thank you card from him.

“A lot of elderly patients get to the stage where they worry and think they’re going to lose their house but we say to them wherever you want to go, we can get things in place.

“We got one lady home and changed her house round with the bed she needed and the equipment she needed – she said that she never thought she’d be sat in her own living room again.

“It is really rewarding and people come back and say thank you and that’s fantastic.

“Unfortunately we had a lady pass away and we spoke to the family and they’ve donated all their flower donations to here – I was really taken aback.

“That was really nice because you don’t expect that.”

One key benefit of the STAR ward is that it lowers the rate of readmissions to the hospital, and matron Sue Rohan says that using the ward allows people to have a better quality of life once they are discharged from hospital.

She said: “Our readmission rate has been lower – we don’t end up 48 hours along the line with a failed discharge because we’re giving them the confidence here and getting them used to being on their own.

“I’m just amazed really because actually things have been set up like this before and we were told that it wouldn’t work.

“There’s a cohort of patients that would’ve had to go into respite care and we would’ve lost some of their functionablility by doing that.

“There are patients who would’ve entered 24 hour care and we’ve got them to their own home and I think that’s the rewarding bit when you think you’ve given someone another opportunity.”