Dozens of patients blocking beds in Black Country and Staffordshire every day

A report published last year by the Care Quality Commission found “too much ineffective coordination” of health and social care services in England.

Each day 54 patients are bed blocking at University Hospitals Of North Midlands Trust, at Sandwell And West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust the figure is 29, at The Royal Wolverhampton Trust it is 24, at The Dudley Group Foundation Trust it is 23 and at Walsall Healthcare Trust it is 14.

NHS England figures show that in August, patients at the University Hospitals Of North Midlands NHS Trust spent a total of 1,679 days waiting to be discharged or transferred to a different care facility.

While at the Sandwell And West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust patients spent a total of 890 days bed blocking, 746 days in Wolverhampton, 704 days in Dudley and 440 days in Walsall.

With elderly patients often stuck waiting to be signed off, there is concern over the impact delays can have on their health.

According to the NHS, a hospital stay of more than 10 days for a person over 80 can lead to 10 years of muscle ageing. That is equivalent to five years of waiting time.

A delayed transfer of care occurs when a patient remains in a bed after being officially declared safe for transfer by both a doctor and a multidisciplinary team, which could include social or mental health care workers.

Delays in transferring a patient between wards, or from one acute hospital to another, are not included.

'Quickly and safely'

In response to the figures, Diane Wake, chief executive at The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We focus everyday on making sure anyone waiting for discharge is out of hospital as quickly and safely as possible.

"We will continue to do everything in our power to get medically fit people out of hospital.”

A University Hospitals of North Midlands Trust spokesman said: “Our staff do everything possible to discharge patients to their next place of care as quickly and safely as possible and we work closely with health and social care organisations to remove any barriers to this.

"We are making good progress towards the long length of stay ambition to reduce the number of people staying in hospital longer than 21 days.”

Paula Gardner chief nurse at Sandwell NHS Trust said: “We work closely with our social care colleagues in Sandwell and have the lowest rate of delayed transfer of care in the country on the last published Local Authority data.”

A spokeswoman for The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust said: “We have introduced a whole host of different ways to reduce our delayed transfers of care.

"Working in partnership with Wolverhampton Council and Wolverhampton Clinical Commissioning Group we have reduced delayed transfers of care by over 70 per cent in Wolverhampton in the last two years.”

Daren Fradgley, for Walsall healthcare NHS Trust added: “In 2017 Walsall Social Care and Walsall Healthcare established a fully integrated Intermediate Care Service (ICS) where social care staff and health staff work collaboratively as one service to discharge patients effectively from hospital back into the community.”

The trust believes that it has further improvements to make, but the current improvements and partnership working demonstrate we are on the right path.”

Inappropriate

Kate Terroni, chief inspector of adult social care for the CQC, said: “We found positive outcomes for older people when leaders in local health and care organisations worked well together.

“But we also found too much poor practice where a lack of co-ordination and co-operation between services had led to fragmented care and badly affected people’s experiences.

"When people can’t access the services they need, the risk is that they are pushed into inappropriate care settings and stay there for too long rather than accessing the care they need within their community."

Across England, an average of 4,802 beds were blocked each day in August 2019, resulting in a total of 148,872 delayed days – equivalent to just under 408 years of lost time.

At University Hospitals Of North Midlands NHS Trust, bed blocking has fallen, from 59 beds each day in August 2018 to 54 this year, at The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, it has risen, from 14 beds to 23 this year, at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, it has fallen slightly, from 28 to 24 this year, at at Sandwell And West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, it has risen, from 18 beds to 29 and at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, it has remained the same, from 15 beds to 14 this year.

An NHS England spokesperson said: “So far this year there have been 14,000 fewer bed days lost than last year, and the average number of people delayed every month has fallen by almost 100.

"Thanks to the hard work of NHS and social care staff over the last two and a half years considerably fewer people now experience a delay in leaving hospital, with the number of delayed discharges 28 per cent lower in August 2019 than it was at its peak."