Update 18 August 2016: Since we wrote this article The Times published a front page correction explaining that the £6 billion figure was a serious error. It now says estimates put the cost at £820 million, which comes from a recent National Audit Office estimate.
“More than 6,000 elderly people are trapped needlessly in hospital beds each month as nursing homes, families and social services fail to provide adequate care. The health service is facing its worst bed-blocking crisis at a cost of nearly £6 billion a year, official figures from NHS England showed yesterday.”
The Times, 12 August 2016
There were over 170,000 delayed bed days in June, the latest month that figures are available for. These are the number of full days each bed could have been used by another patient. 6,000 was roughly the number of people of all ages who were fit to be discharged but hadn’t been on a single day at the end of the month.
The estimates for how much ‘bed blocking’ like this costs NHS ever year vary. We haven’t seen any estimate as high as £6 billion, but none seem to be higher than £900 million.
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We don’t know how much bed blocking costs
We don’t know where The Times got its figure of £6 billion a year in costs as a result of ‘bed blocking’, and we are trying to find out. NHS England told us that it doesn’t recognise that number.
Other estimates from NHS England suggested that for the year ending March 2016 ‘bed blocking’ may have cost the NHS £145 million. But they say this is based on estimates from care providers, the real cost may have higher.
In fact, other estimates have produced a much larger figure.
One key report suggested the cost may be around £900 million a year. This was based on the estimate that as many as 8,500 patients a month were still in hospital beds, but fit to be transferred.
The National Audit Office also estimated the cost of treating patients aged 65 and older who hadn’t been discharged might be as high as £820 million a year. They also estimated that these older patients make up around 85% of all patients who are not discharged once they are deemed fit. That’s based on assuming the cost is around £300 per patient per day.
But it’s not possible to estimate this precisely, according to the NAO, because of the limited data available.
Waiting for care at home is the most common reason for delayed discharge
19% of all people who weren’t discharged from hospital were waiting for a care package to be put in place at home. This was the most common reason for not being discharged at the end of June. 17% of people were waiting to be assessed and a similar proportion were awaiting some other form of NHS care.
This is a change on the same time last year when the top three reasons for a discharge from hospital being delayed were people waiting for other NHS care, awaiting a complete assessment or because of their own or their family’s choice.
There were on average 130,000 overnight beds available in NHS hospitals in England in 2015/16. The House of Commons Library have also said that the number of available beds, per person in the country, decreased by 20% between 2006 and 2012. This has been due to advances in medical care meaning fewer people have to stay in hospital and a deliberate shift towards treating more patients at home if it’s possible.