Bed blocking costs NHS £3m a year
5:15pm Friday 28th September 2007
More than £3m of NHS cash is wasted every year in Oxfordshire because elderly patients are forced to stay in hospitals while waiting for social care.
Last month, more than 40 people stayed at the county's nine community hospitals for an average of seven weeks each until council-funded care services, like home help and nursing home places, were found for them.
None of them needed health care from nurses at the small units at Bicester, Chipping Norton, Didcot, Wantage, Witney, Henley, Oxford, Wallingford and Abingdon, but were too infirm to be discharged home without extra help.
Oxfordshire County Council's Labour leader Barbara Gatehouse was appalled by the long delays. She said Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust, which oversees the community hospitals, should not have to spend money "baling out the county council".
She added: "The average bed cost in the community hospitals is £208 per day. So the cost to the local NHS of looking after these 45 people must have been in the region of half a million pounds.
"The full year cost to the local NHS of keeping an average of about 40 people waiting in community hospitals could well be around £3m."
Mrs Gatehouse spoke out after Jim Couchman, Conservative county council cabinet member for social and community services, admitted that during the week ending Friday, August 17, 45 patients were in community hospitals waiting for social care.
These patients took up almost one fifth of the county's total 243 community hospital beds for an average of 48 days each.
Mr Couchman said Mrs Gatehouse was "totally correct", but said the problem was brought on by chronic under-funding from central Government.
He added: "There are no signs of the position improving, even though it's well known that the proportion of people aged more than 85 is expected to dramatically increase over the next 20 years, putting enormous strain on under-funded social and health care services.
"Over the last 10 years central Government has increased funding to the NHS by 90 per cent in real terms, but only by 14 per cent for social care."
Vim Rodrigo, of Oxfordshire Pensioners' Action Group, said: "The trouble is that we don't seem to have enough caring centres where they can be moved to."