Hospitals sending frail elderly home too soon
THE elderly are being sent home to die by hospital staff under pressure to free-up beds, a report warns today.
Frail patients are routinely discharged too soon – afraid and unable to cope alone.
Serious complaints about unsafe discharge from hospital have soared by a third in a year – with 211 cases in 2014/15 – according to figures from the Health Service Ombudsman.
They include a 93-year-old woman who died in her granddaughter’s arms hours after being sent home by doctors, who had failed to carry out a basic examination.
A report released today by the Ombudsman also exposes how: ÷Patients are being rushed out of hospital so quickly they still have catheters and drips attached; ÷A tenth of hospitals discharge patients without telling relatives; ÷One in eight patients said they were sent home before sufficiently recovering to manage alone; ÷Patients are begging hospitals to be allowed to stay as they are unable to cope at home.
The Ombudsman highlighted nine harrowing cases of unsafe release from hospital, including two patients who died as a result.
One woman said she would be ‘haunted’ for the rest of her life by the avoidable suffering of her mother, who was repeatedly sent home against her wishes. Dame Julie Mellor, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, said: ‘Our investigations have found that some of the most vulnerable patients, including frail and older people, are enduring harrowing ordeals when they leave hospital.
‘The cases I find most upsetting are frail elderly people who are in effect sent home alone.
‘People are being sent home in the middle of the night without people being alerted and without the support they need. This affects people’s human rights to dignity. It can have devastating consequences.
The report warns hospitals are ‘inadvertently’ moving the eld- erly out too soon as they are under pressure to free up beds and meet targets.
Health bosses are trying to crack down on so- called bedblocking or delayed transfers of care, where patients stay on wards despite being medically fit to be discharged.
Trusts are meant to ensure that no more than 3.5 per cent of beds are occupied by such patients – and can be fined for exceeding this target.
But the report warns that hospitals are routinely discharging the elderly without checking they are ready to cope on their own at home.
It highlights examples of patients ‘begging’ hospital staff to be re-admitted only to be refused because someone else needs the bed.
Others were forced to leave hospital in the middle of the night, including an 85-year- old woman with dementia who was left home alone with no food, drink or bedding.
The investigation follows a number of damning reports exposing poor NHS treatment of the elderly. Ministers have repeatedly pledged to improve standards and these efforts intensified after the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal, in which hundreds died of neglect up to 2009.
But the Ombudsman said the numerous guidelines intended to ensure improvement were having little effect.
Age UK’s Caroline Abrahams said: ‘Most people would assume that in a civilised society no older person would ever be pressured to leave hospital without adequate support in place.
‘As such, this report and the dreadful cases it describes, mark a new low in what looks like a continuous downward trend in the capacity of our health and care system to look after our older people … even in its ability to keep the most vulnerable safe and alive.’
Heidi Alexander MP, Labour’s health spokesman, said: ‘This report raises serious questions about why older people are still suffering these awful and completely avoidable failures of care. It should be a matter of course for relatives and carers to be told a loved one is leaving hospital.
‘It is also simply not acceptable for any patient to be discharged before they are medically fit.’
A spokesman for NHS Improvement, which oversees hospital discharges, said: ‘Patients should never be discharged from hospital without the appropriate safeguards in place and without families having been informed.
‘Rather than frail elderly people staying in hospital longer than they need to, it is better to get patients home as quickly as possible and to assess them in their own homes rather than in a hospital – but this must be done with the right help and support in place.’
‘Devastating consequences’