Delayed discharges costing trust £21.5m a year

Patients stuck in hospital beds despite being medically fit to leave are costing an NHS trust about £21.5m a year.

Tees, Esk and Valleys NHS Foundation Trust (TEWV), which covers mental health and learning disability services in areas including County Durham and Teesside, said it had 68 adult patients taking up bed spaces at the end of August despite it not being clinically necessary.

Reasons for the issue included delays in moving people to external care placements, it said in a report. The 68 patients made up about 18% of the trust's total number of acute beds.

The trust said it was seeking to curb the problem by improving its community services.

Hospital beds being occupied for longer than necessary is a national issue caused by various factors including a lack of care home space.

The average hospital bed takes £562 a day to staff and maintain, according to NHS England, which means the health service is losing more than £225m every month supporting patients who could be elsewhere.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has touted his plan for a free NHS-style social care system as a way to solve the problem.

In a report, TEWV said the bed space problem was its "most significant performance, quality and financial risk".

It said it had devised an outline business care for a new crisis assessment centre in Durham which it hoped would divert demand from its acute wards.

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