Elderly ‘bed blockers’ face being told to quit hospital

ELDERLY patients deemed to be ‘blocking’ beds are being threatened with warning letters to make them leave hospital.

NHS trusts have begun imposing the notices on those whose relatives have been unable to place them in care homes.

Letters warn families they have a limited amount of time to find a suitable home or face legal proceedings.

The Sandwell and West Birmingham trust confirmed it had begun issuing relatives with the letters to help them ‘get their heads around’ the responsibility of finding a care home place.

But managers insisted only a handful had been issued and that they were used as a last resort.

The Bournemouth and Christchurch trust introduced a similar policy in 2014 over concerns that families were failing to take responsibility for relatives.

Bed-blocking is at record levels and figures this month showed 8,500 patients were stuck in hospitals every day.

Toby Lewis, chief executive of Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, said it had introduced warning letters to try to help families.

‘We have found the important thing is to have a conversation early, in order to give families time to plan,’ he added.

‘This is a process that takes about three weeks and involves three letters, but we very rarely issue the last one, which begins the eviction process.’

Mr Lewis said the warnings helped to ensure families understood the responsibility to pay for care before deciding where relatives should live.

‘People want to look at two, three or four homes before they make a big life decision,’ he added. ‘We’ve tried to be disciplined about this, but it is also about being humane in how we apply this.’

But Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said she was concerned that elderly people were being put under undue pressure to leave hospital when relatives could not find a decent care home.

‘People have a right to the information they need and a realistic idea about time scales so they can make the best choice for them,’ she added.

‘Arbitrary discharge deadlines are unlikely to help and could make things worse.’

In November 2014, when Bournemouth and Christchurch hospitals imposed eviction measures, managers said some fami- lies had asked them to keep patients while they took a twoweek holiday.

Others demanded that patients stay in hospital because they did not like care home curtains, or because they needed time to build a granny annex at their homes.

Similar policies were employed by Aintree hospitals in Merseyside and Southport and Ormskirk, Greater Manchester, in 2011. They warned families that patients would be given 48 hours to make their own arrangements to leave.

If they refused, trusts threatened to seek a court order for the possession of their bed. The proposals have been condemned as ‘inhumane’ by campaigners.

Bed- blockers are usually elderly people who are deemed well enough for discharge, but remain in hospital because appropriate provisions have not been made for them at home or in care homes.

Many bed-blocking patients suffer dementia and do not leave hospital because there are no places for them in care homes.

Others have suffered a stroke or broken hip and are unable to move back into their own homes before stairlifts or rails are installed.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said when the measures first came to light: ‘This is an absolute disgrace. It is so difficult for these patients to get the help they need in the community.

‘There are simply insufficient resources for people to cope on their own. They need a planned discharged. This is a damning indictment of how society treats the elderly.’

Managers insist the letters are only a last resort, and it is unclear how many patients – if any – have actually been evicted by hospitals in recent years.

Hospital chiefs say the warnings are meant to spur relatives into finding care home places, thus preventing further legal action.

But under trespassing laws – usually reserved to remove gangs of teenagers from shopping malls – it is believed hospitals could seek a court order for possession of their bed. The ‘bed-blockers’ could even be forced to pay the legal fees incurred.

The idea of such evictions came from a 2006 case involving Barnet Primary Care Trust in North London.

It used a High Court possession order to remove a patient who had been in hospital for three years after being declared fit to go home. The patient was also made to pay £10,000 in legal fees.