NHS: Unsafe Hospital Discharges

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, there are millions of interactions between patients and consultants and doctors every day of the year, and there will be some mistakes. We cannot draw conclusions from one or two desperate situations. In so far as they reveal systemic problems, it is valid to draw attention to individual cases of this kind, and there are some systemic issues lying behind the PHSO’s report. In particular, it states:

“We are aware that structural and systemic barriers to effective discharge planning are long standing and cannot be fixed overnight … health and social care … have historically operated in silos”.

That is the issue on which we should be focusing.

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I ask often in this House and elsewhere about co-operation between health and social care. Does the Minister agree that one thing we lack is a cohort of people, be they nurses or paid professional carers, who can work across health and social care in hospital and follow patients into the community? Will the Minister update the House on what is happening to encourage that kind of cohort?