HEALTH bosses are drawing up plans that will seek to avoid an over-reliance on opening extra beds, to deal with winter pressures on hospitals in Gwent.

More beds will be needed as part of a range of measures designed to enable hospitals and other NHS services to cope with surges in demand.

Up to 86 extra beds are set to be available across Gwent’s acute and community hospitals this winter.

But Aneurin Bevan University Health Board wants to complement a beds increase with measures designed to improve patient flow through the hospital system, from admission to discharge, and the arrangements needed to speed up the latter.

Increased morning discharges, transfers to community hospitals by early afternoon, and subsequent reductions in average lengths of stay are the aims of series of measures that are currently being applied on two wards at the Royal Gwent Hospital, with the aim that all wards there and at Nevill hall Hospital will be involved by December.

Part of this will involve employing more discharge co-ordinators in acute and community hospitals, to reduce delayed transfers and discharges.

There is also a plan to see more patients through a system of ambulatory care, providing same-day care where appropriate for patients who might otherwise be admitted to a bed.

The health board has set up an urgent care collaborative, a group of experts charged with delivering these and other measures through the winter months.

Chief operating officer Nick Wood said the focus this coming winter will be on large scale change across hospitals and community services, rather than a series of small initiatives.

He added that it will be important to maintain improvements in performance across the winter.

“If we can deliver these improvements 24/7, our reliance on physical bed capacity should be smaller,” he said.