Half a million bed days lost to bed blocking cost £125 million
Bed blocking cost the NHS £125 million in 2016-17, with an estimated average daily bed day cost of £234, new figures revealed yesterday.
Data released by ISD Scotland revealed one in 13 hospital beds in Scotland are occupied by people who are well enough to leave.
The official data for 2017-18 showed that, across the country, 494,123 bed days were lost to delayed discharge – which occurs when people are medi-
cally ready to leave but have to wait for care arrangements to be made.
The problem cost the NHS in Scotland an £125m in 2016-17 when bed blocking was a more acute problem than it is now.
There was a 6 per cent reduction in 2017-18, with the total of bed days lost because of delayed discharges down from 527,099 the previous year.
That meant the daily average number of beds occupied by those waiting leave dropped from 1,444 in 2016-17 to 1,354.
Last year approximately one in 13 (7.8 per cent) of occupied beds in NHS Scotland were a result of delayed discharges.
However, regional variations meant 18.9 per cent of beds were occupied by patients waiting to leave in NHS Western Isles, while NHS Highland, NHS Lanarkshire, NHS Lothian, NHS Shetland, NHS Borders and NHS Grampian all recorded figures above the Scottish average.
Scotland’s largest health board, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, had the lowest proportion, with 3.1 per cent of beds being taken up by delayed discharge.
The most common reason for patients to be kept in hospital was they were waiting for care arrangements to be put in place, with this accounting for 34 per cent of delayed discharges.
Lib Dem health spokesman Alex cole- hamilton said :“earlier this year my party uncovered people stuck in hospital for up to 618 days after medical staff had declared them ready to leave.
“Now we know the cost of such an awful wait for just one patient could be in the region of £145,000.
“These are eye-watering sums of money for what, in this particular case and indeed the majority of cases, is an entirely avoidable problem. Most patients are waiting on a care home place, social care support to enable them to live in their own home or for an assessment to be conducted.
“The cost of delayed discharges to the NHS, patients and their families is immense. It interrupts the flow of the entire hospital, causing delays in A&E to cancelled operations.”
Health secretary Jeane Freeman welcomed the overall reduction in bed blocking – pointing that this amounted to a 9 per cent drop from 2015-16.