Hospitals: Discharges

(asked on 13th June 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of patients in hospital had a delayed discharge in each of the last five years.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 20th June 2018

Despite the National Health Service being busier than ever with hospital admissions, the majority of patients are discharged quickly. The Government has already taken significant action to help reduce delayed transfers of care, including providing an additional £2 billion of funding for social care, setting expectations locally for reductions in delayed transfers of care and asking the Care Quality Commission to undertake a series of local system reviews to evaluate the boundary between health and social care’s functionality. The Department are also working with system partners to provide a package of support to help local areas improve transfers out of hospital and reduce delays. Overall, there are 1,827 more beds available each day since February 2017. But there is still more to do.

Data surrounding the proportion of patients in hospital with a delayed discharge is not collected centrally. NHS England publishes monthly reports on the total delayed days during the month for all patients delayed throughout the month and this can be found at their website:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/delayed-transfers-of-care/statistical-work-areas-delayed-transfers-of-care-delayed-transfers-of-care-data-2018-19/

Data is shown at provider organisation level, from NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts and primary care trusts. Data is also shown by local authority that is responsible for each patient delayed.

No formal assessment has been made of the cost to the public purse of delayed discharge of a patient.

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