Elderly patients in Oxfordshire are more than twice as likely to be delayed being discharged from hospital than the national average.

Oxfordshire County Council is the eighth worst out of 150 councils in 2007/08 for preventing delayed discharges from acute hospital beds, according to the Commission for Social Care Inspection, although that is a slight improvement on last year.

Every week, 65 patients per 100,000 pensioners in the county faced delayed discharges – more than double England’s average of 27. With 92,722 people aged over 65 in Oxfordshire, that equates to 60 pensioners per week.

Only Stoke-on-Trent, Lewisham, Reading, Brent, Brighton and Hove, Barking and Dagenham, and Wiltshire had worse figures. The figures include delays in transfers from acute hospital beds to non-acute hospital beds – beds in community hospitals, run by Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust – and delays in transfers from acute hospital beds into county council-funded social care.

Oxfordshire was fifth worst in 2006/07, with 69 patients per 100,000 pensioners facing delays.

County councillor Barbara Gatehouse, Labour group spokesman for social and community services, said the figures were shocking.

She said: “People are blocking beds that other people could be using through no fault of their own.

“These people are stuck in hospital with nothing to do – it’s a big issue for a lot of people and it’s very frustrating.”

Mrs Gatehouse acknowledged that the number of delays has been reduced but said further improvements were still needed. County council spokesman Paul Smith said reducing the number of patients stuck unnecessarily in hospital required a co-ordinated effort from several bodies.

He said: “Early signs are very encouraging. The number of discharge delays has significantly reduced over recent months, with a 20 per cent fall in numbers already since the CSCI inspection.”

The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust runs Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, the Churchill Hospital in Headington and the Horton Hospital in Banbury.

Last night a spokesman for the trust said it had been working closely with the county council to reduce the number of delayed transfers into social care.

But she added: “It [delays] remains a concern.

“It is in the best interests of both patients and the NHS for there to be no unnecessary delays in moving patients to the most appropriate setting for their ongoing care.”

l ORH figures for the last week of November showed that 39 patients at its three acute hospitals — the John Radcliffe Hospital, the Churchill Hospital and the Horton Hospital — had been delayed for a total of 494 days.

Delays averaged out at 13 days per patient, but ranged from two days to more than 100 days per patient.

tshepherd@oxformail.co.uk