Lord Warner – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2015-12-21.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the latest assessment available to the Department of Health or NHS England of the annual loss of bed days to the NHS owing to the inability to discharge people from acute hospitals who do not need clinically to be occupying a bed in those hospitals; what is the estimated cost of such occupancy; and what assessment has been made of the cost-effectiveness of the NHS purchasing accommodation directly in nursing or residential care homes for such patients when a local authority is unable to do so.
Lord Prior of Brampton
The latest figures show that between April and October 2015, there were 1,041,587 delayed transfer of care. The Department has made no formal estimate of the costs of delayed discharge to the National Health Service or of the cost-effectiveness of the NHS purchasing accommodation directly in nursing or residential care homes for such patients when a local authority is unable to do so.
It is recognised that such delayed discharges do use resource which could be deployed elsewhere, and all parts of the NHS and those with responsibility outside it, are continually looking for ways in which to reduce the number of delays.
