According to NHS England, currently there are approximately 14,000 patients in hospital who no longer need to be there and 6,000 more patients are staying in hospital more than a week as compared to before pandemic. Discharging patients from hospitals and mental health services is proving more challenging due to shortages of capacity in social care and community care, as well as due to delays in discharge processes.
The new NHS commitment to speed up discharge from hospitals with the aim to help reduce the number of beds occupied by patients ready to be discharged, includes:
- £1.6 billion fund focused on discharge
- introduction of 'Care Transfer Hubs' ahead of winter in every hospital to ensure that patients do not stay in hospital longer than necessary
- new approaches to step-down care to be implemented
- new discharge information to be published following new data collection from April
“Although having more hospital beds and more staff will help, it is also important to make sure patients are not in hospital for longer than necessary. We know that long stays in hospital are not good for patients or their independence and can lead to poorer health and economic outcomes. Discharge delays have increased significantly over the pandemic. This means many more patients are in a hospital bed longer than they need to be: compared to before the pandemic, there are 6,000 more patients staying more than a week in hospital. Both delays in discharge processes and shortages of capacity in social care and community care are making it more challenging to discharge patients from hospitals and mental health services. There are currently around 14,000 patients remaining in hospital who no longer need to be there. On average, around 24% of patients with delayed discharges are awaiting the start of home-based care, 16% are awaiting residential or nursing home placements and 24% are waiting to begin intermediate care… As well as increasing capacity and improving the pathway within hospitals, we need to ensure that people are not in hospital unless they need to be and to improve the experience of patients when they leave hospital.”
The new plan to transform patient care outlines improving discharge as one of the five focus areas. In doing so, there is set out to be an increase in step-down services (intermediate care) and social care, specifically domiciliary care, with an investment of up to £7.5 billion over the next to years committed to reforming the adult social care system.
Discharge is set out to be improved by:
- improving joint discharge processes
- scaling up intermediate care
- scaling up social care services
Read more about the latest Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services report published in January 2023 here.
Learn from outstanding examples of changing culture and improve discharge practice at the forthcoming A Practical Guide to Improving Discharge Practice virtual conference, taking place on Wednesday 10th May 2023. See full programme and speaker lineup here.