Delays cost city 18 hospital beds

2:21pm Wednesday 7th November 2007

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SHOCK figures have revealed a dramatic rise in hospital bed blocking, with more than 18 years worth of bed days wasted last year.

From November 2006 to October 2007, 6,735 bed days were lost at York Hospital - which is the equivalent of 18 beds out of the hospital's 650 being blocked throughout the year- due to delayed discharge.

This represents an increase of 23 per cent from the previous 12 months.

This failure to discharge patients from hospital when they were clinically fit to leave has cost North Yorkshire & York Primary Care Trust £1.7 million.

Hospital bosses today expressed frustration and stated the problem was not of their making. They expressed disappointment at the huge increase and said patients were suffering as a result.

Deputy chief executive at York Hospital, Mike Proctor, said: "Delayed transfers of care are not good news for anybody.

"They are not good news for the hospital, because it impacts on our ability to provide care for patients who do need to be there.

"They are not good news for North Yorkshire & York Primary Care Trust, which has to foot the bill for patients in hospital, and they are not good news for patients, because they are in a hospital environment when they need to be in a more homely environment."

Mr Proctor said the two main reasons for delayed discharge were patients not getting into the nursing home of their choice and the relevant local authority not being able to provide a suitable care package.

He said: "The increase is disappointing and I think it related to some problems at the beginning of the year in January and February, when (City of York Council) social services had problems recruiting staff to support people in their own homes.

"They had limited ability to offer home care packages and I think that accounts for the increase."

The increase in bed-blocking has sparked outrage from York Older People's Assembly, which said the shortage of nursing home places in York had become "chronic".

Chairman, Don Parlabean, said: "I find it disgraceful. There are too many nursing homes that have been turned into sheltered housing.

"Barstow House, just off Nunnery Lane, used to be a lovely nursing home for elderly people, but it is now sheltered housing. The number of elderly is increasing rapidly and it is not a time to be closing nursing homes down, it is a time to be opening them.

"It makes me angry. Elderly people are criticised for waiting for the nursing home of their choice, but all they want is a nursing home in York.

"If you are forced to go to one in Pickering or Malton, then how many visitors are you going to get?

"Wait until you are sitting in the chair, watching the clock and wondering when you are going to see your loved one coming through the door saying hello."

Keith Martin, head of adult services at City of York Council, said a delayed discharge grant from the Government enabled the authority to fund a range of services specifically targeted at addressing the problem of bed-blocking.

He said: "These include intermediate care for people at home who have been discharged from hospital, transitional beds within a nursing home to provide short-term care while people are recuperating and if they require longer term nursing care but are well enough for discharge from hospital.

"These and similar services have been very successful over a period of years in bringing the level of discharge delays down in York by between 35-40 acute bed delays per week."

Blueprint to cut bed blocking

THE deputy chief executive at York Hospital has outlined a plan to overcome the bed-blocking problem at the infirmary.

Mike Proctor said the hospital needs greater provision of nursing home and residential home beds, with particular focus on places for elderly people with mental health problems, such as dementia. He said: "That is a specialist provision, for which there is under provision in this area.

"I also think that while patients are making choices about their longer term care, there need to be alternative locations where these patients can be looked after. We also probably need to be more strict about patients that stay in hospital while their relatives sometimes spend many weeks or months choosing which nursing home they want their relative to go to.

"We do have occasions when relatives don't make the effort to find an appropriate nursing home place sooner."