Bed-blocking in Scots hospitals drops by 11%
THE number of patients kept in hospital after being told they were clinically well enough to leave has dropped by more than 10% in a month.
A census carried out in hospitals in December found 1333 people were affected, down from 1509 the previous month, a fall of 11%.
The most common length of delay was between three days and two weeks while 23 people had been waiting for a year or more.
The problem of bedblocking – also known as delayed discharge -– happens when patients are clinically ready to leave hospital but are waiting for the necessary care and accommodation arrangements to be put in place.
A total of 45,067 days were taken up by bedblocking in December, the ISD Scotland figures show, down from 45,639 in November –a 1% drop.
In the December survey, most people affected (69%) were aged 75 and over.
The majority of de- lays were due to health and social care reasons, such as waiting for care home places or for social care support.
Labour health spokesman Anas Sarwar accused the Scottish Government of “total mismanagement” of the NHS.
He said: “The problem has become so bad that delayed discharge across Scotland could have filled every single bed in three Scottish hospitals every day of the year, or every single patient room in our flagship hospital.
“A decade of shortterm thinking and total mismanagement of our NHS has resulted in patients being trapped in hospitals when they don’t need to be there.”
Health Secretary Shona Robison said: “While these figures show delayed discharges at the lowest level since June 2016, we need to build on the good work already being done and which has led to a year-on-year reduction of 7% .
“We have integrated health and social care to ensure patients are at the heart of care decisions.
“I remain determined to eradicate this problem and to do this we’ve allocated an additional £107million for health and social care integration.”