Transfer of care delays threaten to capsize the NHS

Transfer of care delays threaten to capsize the NHS Doctors face a struggle every day and everywhere in England: the fight to secure social care for patients well enough to leave hospital.

Even officially it worsens month by month, increasing harm to patients and financial strain on the NHS, at a time when it’s least needed.

The latest figures, aiming to size up the problem, broke records in October. Patients spent 200,000 days in beds they did not need that month, a rise of 25 per cent on the same month in 2015.

Known as ‘delayed transfers of care’, the NAO (National Audit Office) estimated that, in the case of older patients in England, the unnecessary days in hospital cost more than £800m last year.

As bad as it is, this official tally of costly and unnecessary hospital stays undercounts the problem ‘significantly’, the NAO admits in a study this year, by a factor of almost three. British Medical Association