Bed blocking crisis worsens

Government figures for a selected day in July show that 145 people who were well enough to go home were taking up beds in Oxfordshire’s hospitals, up from 103 in June, and 129 in May.

The Department of Health figures also showed Oxfordshire patients who were well enough to head home spent a total of 4,073 days in hospital beds, compared to 3,648 days the previous month – the second-highest figure for the past 11 months.

Last month the Oxford Mail revealed the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS trust had been forced to open a dedicated 36-bed ward for the so called ‘delayed transfers of care’.

The bed-blocking problem is costing Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals £3.3m a year but must find £52m of savings in this year alone, enough to keep three wards open for a year.

But the two main agencies responsible for fixing the problem did not let anyone be interviewed to discuss the issue yesterday, instead releasing a joint statement.

Arash Fatemian, the county councillor responsible for social care who six months ago pledged an improvement, was also yesterday unavailable for comment.

In a statement Oxfordshire County Council and NHS Oxfordshire disputed the government figures.

The joint statement said: “Although the delayed transfer of care figure of 145 for July appears on the Government website, this figure is yet to be confirmed and the actual figure for the month is likely to prove lower than this for Oxfordshire. An agreed figure will be published in due course.”

The statement added: “The complex issue of delayed transfers of care is shared between the county council and health organisations across Oxfordshire and is an issue of huge priority and significance.

“Work is ongoing, however, we do require sustainable change and this does take time to achieve. We are all committed to working together to find modern and sustainable solutions to implement robust changes to meet the needs of our population.

“About £6.1m extra will have been spent on delayed transfers of care by the end of 2011/12 to establish a robust system with clearly defined processes and pathways to streamline the system in place and therefore speed up decision making.

“We are also looking at alternative services that support can support patients outside of the hospital, such as the hospital at home scheme and re-ablement services.”

The statement did not say why officials thought the final figure was likely to be lower and what the proposed “robust system” would mean in practice.

Last night the ORH said it had 99 people who were well enough to go home – 85 of whom were from Oxfordshire. A spokesman said the figure did not include more patients in community hospitals awaiting care packages to be put in place.

Susanna Pressel, who is on the county council’s health overview and scrutiny panel, said she was ‘extremely disappointed’ by the figures. She said: “The county council could be working much better with the NHS.

“I’m ashamed Oxfordshire is almost the worst place in the whole country for this. I have been begging everybody that I can think of to let the Health Scrutiny committee look at this, because we can invite people from the NHS to come and sit down together with the social services people to explain what is being done.

“But apparently it has to be dealt with by the Adult Social Care committee, which only invites county council people down who just pretend everything is fine. Well, it clearly isn’t.

“I am disgusted by the county council’s inability to work properly in partnership.”

HOW BED BLOCKING OCCURS - A person is classed as ‘delayed’ when they cannot move into the right place of care for their needs safely. This can mean either transferring to their own home, into another hospital or a care home.

Delays can occur for many reasons, from patients needing adaptations to their home to make it suitable following a major injury, to not having sufficient resources to meet the demand for care at home, or no vacant beds in a community hospital.