NHS hospital bosses told to tackle delays in patient discharges

MPs at Parliament’s public accounts committee have accused hospital bosses in England of not making enough effort to tackle delays in discharging patients from hospital who are considered to be medically fit, and have said that NHS England must do more to assist hospitals in this matter.

The report was published following record levels in discharge delays and the committee will be providing funds to tackle the issue.

The issue centres around patients who are considered fit to leave hospital, being kept in due to a lack of community support services for vulnerable and elderly patients.

However, the committee said that hospital officials were too quick to focus on the lack of care services meaning that little could be done to assist in discharges.

The National Audit Office (NAO) recently estimated that discharge delays were costing the NHS £820m a year and delays had risen by a third in two years to in excess of 1.1 million days. They added that this was bad news for patients, as it meant an increased risk of infection and elderly patients were at risk of losing mobility during prolonged hospital admissions.

Chair of the committee, Meg Hillier, suggested help should be sought by NHS England, to encourage good practice which was already being exercised by hospitals who were successful in reducing delays.

Ms Hillier said “Blaming local circumstances for poor performance short-changes patients and is an unacceptable cop-out.”

A Department of Health spokesperson said “Local authorities will have more money – up to 3.5bn extra – for adult social care by 2019-20 and by 2020 we will be investing an extra £10bn a year so the NHS can introduce its own plan for the future and help fewer people go to hospital in the first place.”

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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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