Nightingale hospitals

[thecaretaker]

With stories of hospitals being overwhelmed and ambulances lined up outside with patients (some waiting 9 hours)... I'd like to ask. Why have the Nightingale hospitals which were put on standby not been opened up?

I understand some were stripped of equipment when they were mothballed which would need to be replaced again. But has everybody forgotten they are there?

[Taz]

Think I read something about not having the staff to operate the machinery/equipment needed for them. Surely though you divert non urgent/covid patients to them though where a "normal" nurse can care for them, and the ones that need the higher care go to the hospitals?

[Drone]

Looks like they were relying on the military to run them. They were, as I understand it, originally intended for Covid patients who were out of ICU & able to manage on a general ward. But of course there has to be enough doctors to run them as well as nurses & other medical staff.

[Handyman]

The NHS was already 50,000 nurses and 8,000 doctors short before the crisis, many of the military medical staff spend most of their time working in the NHS anyway so are not an additional resource. 10% of the staff are currently off sick or self-isolating and so it is unclear how the Nightingale hospitals (costing £220 million to set up) were ever going to be staffed. Some of them are being dismantled having never or barely been used and it seems more likely that if hospitals are full they are just going to build tents in the car park to treat them in.