Bed-blocking is ‘systemic’ in our hospitals says NHS boss

THE head of the NHS has admitted that bed-blocking in hospitals is a ‘systemic problem’.

Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, agreed that significant change was needed to reduce delays in patients being discharged.

He was challenged by MPs after a report by the National Audit Office revealed the £820million annual cost of patients staying in hospital unnecessarily because of dificulties in arranging care when they leave.

At a meeting of the Commons public accounts committee, member Richard Bacon asked Mr Stevens: ‘Do you think we have a systemic problem?’

The NHS chief replied ‘yes’. The Tory MP for South Norfolk told Mr Stevens he had not solved the problem because he had been ‘doing the wrong thing’.

‘I’m not saying that you are not trying but it seems to me you must be missing something,’ he added. Mr Bacon recalled how his father, frustrated at a four-day delay in being discharged from a stay in hospital, ended up ‘bellowing’ at staff in frustration, booking a taxi and discharging himself.

‘Bellowing in frustration’

‘You need a step change’, he told Mr Stevens. ‘In many parts of the country, yes’, the NHS boss accepted.

Tory MP Stephen Phillips called the cost of bed-blocking to the NHS a ‘national disgrace’. Fellow Conservative Anne-Marie Trevelyan said it was money ‘poured down the drain’. The committee also heard there were widespread differences in delayed discharges.

‘Best performing’ Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust – which has taken over social care services from councils – recorded zero while as many as five per cent of patients suffered delays in other areas, MPs were told.

Mr Stevens said: ‘There are parts of the country where [the system] is working well and parts where it isn’t’.

Amyas Morse, of the National Audit Office, said the issue needed ‘radical action’.