The number of patients who are trapped in hospital despite being fit to leave has reached an all-time high, putting extra pressure on the NHS as it enters its critical winter period.
Such patients, who cannot be safely discharged usually because local social care is inadequate, accounted for 160,094 bed days in October – the highest number since records began more than five years ago. That is the total number of bed days in effect lost to the NHS because hospital staff could not use them for another patient, which leads to hospitals getting overcrowded.
In all 5,328 patients who were fit to go but could not leave – mainly frail, elderly people were still in hospital at the end of October. That is almost 50% more than the previous month, suggesting a sudden worsening of the problem in the late autumn, and about double the 2,647 such patients who were in the same position in September 2010.
In addition, hospitals are already struggling to treat and either admit or discharge A&E patients within the required four hours and to give patients key diagnostic tests quickly enough, ambulance services are missing key targets to respond to 999 calls, and growing numbers of cancer patients are not being treated within 62 days.
The worrying signs of faltering NHS performance in key areas, contained in the latest statistics for how the service in England did in October, have renewed concerns it is facing a potentially very difficult “winter crisis” worse than the one that last year forced many hospitals to declare major incidents because they could not cope.
Full story in The Guardian 10 December 2015