Bed-blocking back on the rise
THE number of patients in hospital despite being healthy enough to leave has soared.
There are now 872 ‘bed-blocking’ cases in Scotland’s hospitals – the highest number since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
They are all clinically ready to be discharged but do not have a home care plan agreed or a care home place.
The SNP Government has repeatedly failed to deliver on a pledge to abolish bed-blocking, also referred to as delayed discharge. At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of delayed discharge patients were moved to care homes without ensuring they were tested first. This has been criticised for potentially leading to outbreaks of the virus in care homes.
Yesterday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon again appeared to acknowledge that it may have been a mistake.
Care homes took in 921 hospital patients in March, a rise of more than 50 per cent on the previous month.
In early March, when the NHS first began to step up preparations for the virus, there were 1,612 delayed discharge cases in Scotland. This fell over
March and April and hit a low of 580 on April 27. It was 872 last week.
Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘If the Scottish Government wanted to abolish delayed discharge they could have years ago. They did during the pandemic and now we see them reverting to a situation where people are just left in hospital.’
The Scottish Government said the increase in bed-blocking reflected the gradual restarting of NHS services and that reducing delayed discharge was a long-standing aim.
A spokesman added: ‘It is not a decision that Government neither directs nor makes.’