MANAGERS at Oxford’s hospitals have admitted a £6.3m overspend on staffing is partly down to the county’s bed-blocking problem.

Each month hundreds of people well enough to leave the John Radcliffe Hospital are remaining in costly hospital beds because of problems sorting out ongoing care.

The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust (ORH) has pointed out it has also earned an extra £4.4m this year because it gets paid for every patient it looks after.

But, at a meeting of the ORH trust board yesterday, it said the spiralling staffing bill had been hit by “the cost impact of the staffing required to support delayed transfer of care patients”.

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

Only Birmingham has a poorer figure in the UK. The duty of arranging ongoing care falls to a number of organisations, mainly overseen by Oxfordshire County Council and NHS Oxfordshire, the county’s primary care trust.

But yesterday, workforce director Sue Donaldson said “increased activity” at the hospital from the delayed transfer of care patients had contributed to the problem.

She said: “At the end of June pay budgets were overspent by £4.3m. This has increased to £6.3m by the end of month four.

“This pay is largely a result of anticipated levels of savings not being fully realised.

“This is partly due to activity and capacity exceeding planned levels and the cost impact of the staffing required to support delayed transfer of care patients.”

Last night the trust was unable to say specifically how much of the staffing overspend was down to bed blocking.

But it did say £5.1m was spent on bringing in bank and agency staff.

Meanwhile, earlier this year the John Radcliffe Hospital opened a ward especially to deal with bedblocking patients.

In April, it announced plans to reduce its workforce by between seven to eight per cent in the next year, mainly through staff turnover.

It also said since April the trust has had 271 full-time staff leave, and 290 new starters.

Finance director Mark Mansfield, pointed out the new starters were not necessarily all in full-time posts.

But he added: “The trust is concerned about the workforce costs. It is the largest single area of NHS budget.”

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.

Earlier this week the Oxford Mail revealed a row had broken out between the three main organisations involved in the county’s bed-blocking crisis.

A statement from the ORH, county council and NHS Oxfordshire said: “We recognise that getting people out of hospital into health or social care within the community or at home continues to be issue within Oxfordshire – all organisations involved are working on a day to day basis to support patients to leave hospital when medically fit and receive timely rehabilitation and high-quality support in the right setting.

“We are committed to working together to put in place sustainable solutions while acknowledging that doing so will take time.”