£14m on delayed discharge
NICOLA FINDLAY
Alarming figures have revealed NHS Lanarkshire spent almost £15million keeping patients fit to be discharged in hospital.
Figures, published by NHS Scotland, reveal the Lanarkshire board lost 63,921 days as a result of bed blocking in 2018.
The most up to date estimated cost of each delayed discharge is £234, working out to a total of £14.95m.
NHS Lanarkshire was below NHS Lothian, which spent £30.6m on delayed discharge and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde which recorded a figure of £14.98m.
The total for Scotland in 2018 was a staggering £120m.
Val de Souza, chief officer of the South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership (SLHSCP), said: “In South Lanarkshire we have been seeing an improving position in relation to delayed discharge.
“There has been a reduction of almost 20 per cent in ‘bed days’ caused by delayed discharge for the first six months of this year compared to the same period in the previous year.
“This is despite increasing A&E attendances and emergency admissions – both of which are up by almost three per cent in the same time period.
“This improvement is the result of a good deal of hard work, not least by our hard working staff, and the introduction of a range of measures which continue to support more people being able to be cared for in the community without the need for hospital admission as well as supporting earlier discharge.
“SLHSCP, with capital investment from South Lanarkshire Council, is also embarking on an £18m redesign and modernisation programme relating to care homes. This is a very positive move which will add significant capacity to the whole system to support the anticipated and continuing growth in demand.”
Central Scotland MSP Monica Lennon has branded the statistics as a “crisis in social care”.
She said: “Cash-strapped health boards like NHS Lanarkshire are spending millions keeping people in hospital when they don’t need to be there.
“That’s down to the crisis in social care, which will only be made worse by £230m worth of cuts to local government in the SNPGreen budget.
“Scottish Labour would ensure social care gets the staff and funding it needs and in government we would introduce a national care workers guarantee with a commitment to secure hours, a living wage and reimbursement for travel and training time.”
Rutherglen MSP Clare Haughey fired back: “Over the last three years, we have seen year on year reductions in the number of bed days lost due to delays. However, it is still unacceptable for people to be unnecessarily delayed in hospital after their treatment is completed.
“The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that delays to discharge from hospital are minimised, and the ongoing integration of health and social care has been key to achieving recent progress.
“As part of the Scottish Government’s budget, more than £700m will be invested in health and social care integration, increasing investment in health and social care partnerships to more than £9bn.”