Steep rise in patients being sent home during night

Laura Donnelly HEALTH EDITOR Ashley Kirk SENIOR DATA JOURNALIST

VULNERABLE patients are increasingly being sent home from hospital in the middle of the night, despite repeated pledges to stop the practice.

An investigation reveals that the number of patients being discharged between the hours of 11pm and 6am has risen by more than a fifth in five years.

Charities said the figures were a “tragic” reflection of an unsafe and inhumane health service, which was putting lives at risk. They said frail pensioners, including those with dementia, had died after being found wandering the streets after being discharged at night.

The sharp rise has occurred since senior health officials ordered hospitals to stop the practice.

Sir Bruce Keogh, then NHS medical director, first issued the instructions in 2012. Since then a number of health watchdogs have warned against such practices, with concern that vulnerable elderly people are being sent back to freezing homes without any support.

The figures, from Freedom of Information disclosures, show that 258,698 discharges were made at night during 2017-18.

Almost a quarter of cases involved pensioners, including tens of thousands over the age of 75. The figures come from 109 NHS acute and mental health trusts – just over half those in England – suggesting the total figure across the country will be still higher.

They included more than 18,000 men and women aged between 65 and 74, another 18,000 patients aged between 75 and 84, and nearly 14,000 aged 85 and over.

Some 85 trusts provided information, tracking night-time discharges over five years. Between them they sent 180,493 people home overnight in 201718 – a 21 per cent increase on the 148,846 night-time discharges in 2012-13.

Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “Discharging people with dementia at night is obviously both unsafe and unacceptable – but despite pledges to bring this inhumane practice to an end, instead it appears to be on the rise.

“Systemic pressures in the health and care systems, including the desire to lower ‘bed blocking’ figures, can turn hospitals into conveyer belts, threatening patients’ well-being,” he said.

“The human cost of this situation is tragic – we’ve heard through our helpline of a woman with dementia discharged at night and sent to the locked doors of her care home.

“The health and social care systems have to start talking, and working, better together. But that can only come from properly funding care out of hospital. Access to good quality care is a basic right we would all expect if we developed dementia – it’s a travesty in 21st century Britain that so many vulnerable people are suffering.”

A spokesman for the NHS said: “As the number of admissions has increased, so too has the number of discharges at any time of day, but actually across England a tiny proportion of discharges takes place at night.”