Full story in Pulse, 13 June 2018
NHS England has told GPs to help hospitals to reduce the number of patients who stay too long in hospital by a quarter.
Hospitals will be told they must reduce lengthy stays of hospital patients, especially those who are elderly and frail, by 25% before winter or face disciplinary measures.
Speaking at the annual NHS Confederation conference in Manchester, Simon Stevens and Ian Dalton, the chief executives of NHS England and NHS Improvement, will set out the plans which will they say will ‘help to free up thousands of hospital beds and ease pressures next winter’.
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But GP leaders argued that there was no capacity in general practice to deal with the extra workload of caring for patients released earlier from hospital stays.
BMA GP Committee chair Dr Richard Vautrey said: ‘Practices, and particularly community nursing teams, are struggling already with patients who have been discharged too early with complex problems.’