A ROW has broken out between the three main organisations involved in the county’s bed-blocking crisis.

Oxfordshire County Council, NHS Oxfordshire, and the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust cannot agree just how many people, fit enough to leave care, are stuck in hospital beds around the county waiting to move on.

And a hospital boss has revealed he believes the problem has been “under-reported” for years.

Last week the Oxford Mail published figures released on the Department of Health website which stated 145 patients were medically fit to leave hospital but were kept in medical beds because of a lack of care home facilities.

The figures are provided by Oxfordshire County Council, NHS Oxfordshire, and the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals trust to the government as a monthly ‘snapshot’.

But the council and NHS Oxfordshire contacted the Oxford Mail to say the hospitals trust had not ‘cleared’ their element of the figures with them first, as is required.

The two agencies said they believed there were only 110 patients delayed in places around the county during July.

The ORH stands by the figure it had provided to the government, which boosted the total figure to 145.

The bed-blocking problem is costing Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals £3.3m a year.

Paul Brennan, medical director at the ORH, said over the years “tweaks to the figures” had actually meant the issue had been under-reported.

He said: “When the system for counting the number of patients who have a delayed discharge was introduced nearly ten years ago, there was provision for local amendments.

“In some areas, this has meant that over time the local rules being applied to the numbers submitted have drifted out of line with the national guidance set by the government."

“For instance, in Oxfordshire this meant that if a patient’s expected onward destination changed for any reason – they may have been expected to leave hospital and go on to a community hospital, and then that might be changed to a care-home environment, for instance – they were not counted as delayed until a set time-frame elapsed.

“They effectively went back to the start of the system for recounting.”

Susanna Pressel, who is on the county council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Panel, said the disagreement demonstrated why the problem was so bad in Oxfordshire.

For the first time the issue will be discussed by two council scrutiny panels, the Adult Services Scrutiny Committee, on September 6, and the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee later in the month.

Ms Pressel said: “These organisations are supposed to be working together, not quarrelling and trying to blame one another in public.

“It’s a diversionary tactic.

“For heaven’s sake stop quarrelling and sort it out."

In a joint statement Oxfordshire County Council and NHS Oxfordshire said: “We are working with the Oxford Radcliffe NHS Hospitals Trust to ensure the data used when reporting DTOC figures is common to all organisations involved.”