Patients urged to return wheelchairs and crutches to save hospitals money

THE NHS is to launch a national “crutch amnesty” to deal with concern that perfectly good medical equipment is going to waste cluttering up homes across the country.

Patients are being urged to return wheelchairs, walking frames and other aids to local hospitals, as part of a war on waste across the NHS. Ministers are concerned that hospitals do little to track down such equipment – and even refuse to use unwanted aids when patients attempt to return them.

Too often items were thrown away after only being used once, Steve Barclay, the health minister, said. The minister said thousands of crutches, wheelchairs and walking aids were being binned, wasting NHS resources.

He urged hospitals to follow those with schemes that ensure items are properly reused, or passed on to charities that can make good use of them. He said: “In too many instances… medical equipment is being used once and then thrown away at a time when the public is increasingly aware of the impact of waste on the environment.

“Patients should be able to return the countless pairs of perfectly good crutches sitting unused in the corner of living rooms across the country and know they will be put to good use helping others, either in the NHS or elsewhere through charity donations.”

A scheme at Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust reuses walking aids that patients have returned, such as frames and crutches. When returned, the items are reused or recycled; last year 21 per cent of crutches and 61 per cent of walking frames were returned. This generated savings of more than £25,000, officials said.

Rachel Power, the chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “Patients are often bewildered that the NHS does not ask for equipment back when they have finished using it, and sometimes even find that the NHS can make it bafflingly hard when they try to return it. This can raise questions in people’s minds about the efficiency of the NHS, and even undermine confidence in it – all completely needlessly.”

“We’d like to see an NHS where patients are able to return equipment that is no longer needed, and where equipment will be sensibly recycled and reused when it can be,” she said.