It’s cruel to evict patients at night

IT’S late at night and most patients are fast asleep on the ward. The phone rings at the nurses’ station and a nurse hurries over to a bed, wakes the occupant and helps her to dress.

Within half an hour, the blearyeyed patient has been bundled into a taxi and is on her way home. But to what? A dark, cold house? No milk or food in the fridge and too late to call a son or daughter for help?

This is a scene repeated in hospital wards up and down the country, according to shocking new figures released under a Freedom of Information request. Some 250,000 patients were discharged at night during 2017-18, almost a quarter of them over the age of 75.

Despite assurances by successive NHS leaders since 2012 that the practice will stop, the number of people discharged out of hours has increased more than 20 per cent in five years.

I’ve seen it myself. One woman with dementia was discharged without keys to her home. She would have spent the night on her doorstep had the taxi driver not had the wit to take her back to hospital. She then had to sit up all night because her bed had been given to someone else.

In the drive to be ‘efficient’, many hospitals are increasing bed occupancy rates to 100 per cent. If there are people in A&E needing a bed, then managers have little option than to turf someone less sick out of theirs, regardless of the time of night.

It’s time for a cast iron guarantee from NHS leaders that this callous practice will be banned immediately.