Ward 9 provides care and treatment for elderly and frail patients.
Ward 9 at Westmorland General Hospital is located on Level 4.
*Temporary closure of Langdale Ward at Westmorland General Hospital
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust has made a temporary change to the way it provides community services at Westmorland General Hospital in order to protect the safety of patients and staff at the site.
The Trust operated community beds (on the Langdale Ward on Level Four of the hospital). The plan to reinstate elective (planned) services following the coronavirus outbreak mean that the WGH site will be used for routine day surgery for patients across the Morecambe Bay area.
This will require those patients to self-isolate for two weeks prior to their surgery to ensure that they remain coronavirus-free – and the Trust therefore needs to maintain the site being a COVID-19 secure hospital – free from coronavirus.
As medical patients who are usually those admitted to the Langdale wards will not have been self-isolating - the Trust plans to change the way it provides community services for those patients and ensure the safety of patients and staff at the site.
The Trust has therefore temporarily closed the beds on the Langdale ward, and will use staff who provide those services in a different way – to support patients in the community to remain safely at home. The temporary closure will be reviewed every three months.
Full quality and equality impact assessments have been carried out and the Rapid Response and Rehabilitation services are being strengthened to support people being cared for in their own homes.
We are doing this to ensure that we can treat as many people who need procedures and operations as quickly and safely as possible after they have had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic and our response to that.
We are strengthening our community teams to ensure that patients across the south Lakes area who would otherwise have been admitted to the Langdale ward can be treated in their own homes and receive the very best care – while able to continue living at home. We would stress this is a temporary move and the ward will return when the threat from coronavirus has reduced and the move will be reviewed every three months.