Healthy patients ‘stranded’ in hospital wards rises by 80 per cent

The number of patients stuck in hospital in England despite being medically fit to leave nearly doubled between February and November this year.

NHS England data shows that the number of times hospital trusts were unable to discharge a patient who no longer met the criteria to stay in hospital increased from 223,593 in February to 402,211 in November – a rise of almost 80 per cent.

The data shows the extent of ‘stranded patients’ – people who are clinically fit to leave hospital but cannot be discharged, often because of a lack of adult care or NHS community health provision. As a result, patients find themselves stuck in an environment where they pick up infections, while hospitals are unable to free up bed space for new admissions.

The Observer has also obtained data on delayed transfers of care (DTOC), which measures the number of days individual patients stayed in hospital after they were ready to be discharged. NHS England stopped collecting DTOC statistics at the start of the pandemic, but a freedom of information request found 26 hospital trusts that are still recording these figures – with DTOC numbers rising by nearly 75 per cent between February and October.

For example, University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust saw acute care DTOC numbers increase from 2,701 on 1 April to 4,452 on 1 October.