Bed-blocking five year warning

Delays in releasing elderly patients from hospital could continue for up to five years, NHS England has warned.

In May, the National Audit Office released a report claiming that delays in discharging patients from hospitals in England had risen by nearly a third over two years, with bed-blocking estimated to cost £820 million a year.

Bed-blocking occurs when a patient is deemed medically well enough to be released from hospital, but something else delays their discharge. It has been reported that more than a million days of bed occupancy were lost to other patients last year.

Simon Stevens, NHS England chief executive, told MPs the number of blocked beds may not reach zero soon because of social care pressures, and expressed his frustration that no single model to deal with the crisis seemed to work.

He said: “We have looked at this pretty hard over the last 18 months and it has received an enormous amount of time in the NHS and ministers. And every time you think you have come up with an answer ‘if we could just sort this out, all will be well’ – it just ain’t like that.”