TOO many elderly Oxfordshire patients are being sent to community hospitals away from their family and friends, it has been claimed.

A county patient group says the move to send ill pensioners to convalesce miles from their homes has been taken in a bid to ease the bed-blocking crisis.

In December, patients spent 5,969 days in Oxford University Hospitals Trust (OUH) hospitals when they should have moved on to the next stage of recovery or care.

The figures are down from a peak in October, when patients were stuck in hospital beds for 6,335 days.

Jacquie Pearce Gervis, of patient group Patient Voice, said: “Patients are being discharged from the OUH and, in an attempt to clear the bed-blocking, being sent to community hospitals outside their catchment area, in places such as Henley and Wantage, etc.

“Older people have older friends. Not only is visiting difficult but they need to be near their own comfort zones in the latter years of their lives.

“Patient Voice is concerned at the policy to send patients to the first available community bed, irrespective of where the patient lives.

“They should remember they are dealing with people, not statistics.”

Oxford Health, which jointly arranges community hospital placements with Oxfordshire County Council, said in order to make sure people were not ‘bed-blocking’ it needed to send people to places where there was space.

Dr Stephen Richards, chief executive of the Oxfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, which has been trying to tackle the bed-blocking problem, said: “Every effort is made to place a patient close to their home.

“However, for a small number of cases this is not always possible; sometimes that is because the patient has particular care needs, such as for stroke rehabilitation that cannot be met close to home.

“In other cases it is because the most local community hospital has no available capacity, and waiting for a bed there would delay necessary rehabilitation and assessment.

“When patients move to a community hospital that is not close to their home and express a wish to move, the clinical team caring for them will discuss with them whether a move is appropriate.

“If it is they will then seek a more local provision for that patient and access it if it’s appropriate and becomes available.”

According to one Oxford family, their severely ill father was ‘threatened with eviction’ from hospital because he refused to go to a community hospital 22 miles away.

Frank Saunders, 80, from Headington, who had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, was being treated at the Churchill Hospital in November 2010, but had been found a place at the Henley Community Hospital.

But according to his wife Dr Chris Saunders and daughter Mary-Jane Sareva, the former car breaker did not want to be moved so far away from his family and friends, who he relied on as a ‘support network’.

Mr Saunders refused to go to Henley and was instead found a place at Abingdon Community Hospital. He died the following month.

Last night the OUH, which runs the Churchill, said it could not say whether staff had told the cancer sufferer he had to leave the bed, but admitted it did have the power to force patients to leave.

A spokesman said: “In cases where a patient is not happy with the care package offered, every effort is made to try to find the best possible solution for the patient’s ongoing care.

“Using legal powers would be a last resort and the Trust has never had to do so to date.”