SNP failure to end bed blocking cost £110m
THE SNP’s inability to tackle bed-blocking cost Scotland’s NHS more than £100million last year.
In the 12 months to August, 511,972 bed days were occupied by delayed discharge patients.
According to NHS Scotland it costs £214 a day to keep in hospital a patient who has been deemed medically fit to return home.
This means bed-blocking cost taxpayers £110million last year.
The figures were published by Scottish Labour after being verified by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre.
Health Secretary Shona Robison had pledged two years ago to eradicate bed-blocking, but thousands of patients remain in hospitals when they are fit to be sent home.
Delayed discharge occurs when a person has been deemed medically fit to be released from hospital but is kept in.
This is often caused by a delay in setting up a health and social care package for patients, such as finding a care home place, making home modifications or finding carers.
Yesterday, Labour social care spokesman Colin Smyth accused the SNP of failing to tackle bedblocking, insisting that the Scottish Government must invest in health and social care.
He said: ‘The SNP promised to abolish delayed discharge. Instead it has cost our health service more than £100million in the past year.
‘The Government cannot slash the budgets of local services people rely on and not expect it to have a knockon effect to our health service.
‘Much of the delays in discharging patients are due to social care issues and delays in care assessments, the result of years of an SNP Government slashing local authority budgets, with £1.5billion cut since 2011.’
In February, patients spent the equivalent of 40,246 days in hospital because of bed-blocking.
One of the main aims of the Nationalist policy to integrate health and social care is to drive down bedblocking but party backbencher Christine Grahame has claimed it is ‘not working in practice’. One of her constituents had been stuck in hospital for eight months awaiting a ‘care package’, she added.
Yesterday Miss Robison said: ‘No one should wait longer than necessary to leave hospital. That is why we have legislated to integrate health and social care to ensure services are planned and commissioned from a single budget.
‘This year, almost half a billion pounds of additional investment will go into social care and integration, while the health revenue budget will rise by almost £2billion by 2021.’
‘Years of slashing council budgets’