A hospital service that was only getting five referrals a day is set to be relocated in order to free up underused beds ahead of a tough winter for the NHS.

The  Greenwich CCG will be moving the recently opened frailty unit at Eltham Hospital and replacing it with an extended ‘intermediate care’ service run by Oxleas.

Intermediate care is a period of care and rehabilitation between the hospital and home.

The shift comes because the current system often not being used, with an average of three beds being used by the frailty unit per day.

The frailty unit will be moved back to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, freeing up currently empty beds for patients who need rehabilitation outside of a hospital.

In Spring 2017 the NHS opened the frailty unit at Eltham Hospital, to avoid patients taking up space at QE.

Neil Kennett-Brown, managing director of Greenwich CCG, said: “The challenge is that it was significantly under utilised. Sometimes only three beds were being used.

“We had lots of empty beds, and even at its busiest point in November, 62 per cent of beds were empty, and on average we only had about five referrals a day.”

The MD said the most referrals made in a day was just eight, with often none being made at weekends.

He went on: “The challenge was that as we moved into Winter, was that we had empty beds in this ward in Eltham but a hospital with people waiting in corridors.”

The hospital considered closing beds because of under-use, but instead will work with Oxleas to run a intermediate care unit with more beds over winter.

The long term future is not confirmed yet, with Mr Kennett Brown saying  at a scrutiny meeting last week: “We need to be less reliant on beds as a community.

“What I want to do is to develop therapy services for people in their own homes.”

The hospital will be bringing beds into use ahead of what is predicted to be a tough winter for the NHS.

Cllr Hartley said: “What we are talking about is moving from a model that prevents people having to going to hospital to a model that allows more beds to be used.

“That’s it in a nutshell. The cause of the under utilisation is insufficient referrals – have you thought about addressing that?”

The NHS boss said: “We are doing that. Our hope is still the number of referrals for people not quite coping and need assessments will go up rapidly. They can go through the care unit as well.”

It comes as the CCG was praised by the CQC healthcare watchdog, being upgraded from a service that was rated as inadequate to good.