Hospital ‘bed blocking’ numbers hit highest level since 2017

The number of patients stuck in hospitals because they could not be transferred is at its highest quarterly level since 2017, reversing years of progress amid ongoing crises in health and care services.

“Delayed transfers of care” – often known as “bed blocking” – rose in the mid-2010s as austerity hit council-run adult-care services, meaning hospitals were unable to discharge patients into the community.

The number of “delayed days” in the NHS increased from an average of 114,000 a month in 2012 to more than 200,000 in October 2016, before extra funding and higher council taxes brought the numbers back down.

But the latest NHS figures show the problem is returning. December 2019 saw 148,000 delayed days across England, 15% higher than the same month a year earlier. The combined figures for the last quarter of 2019 were the highest in two years.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said: “These are simply shocking figures and reveal how our NHS has been left struggling after years of bed cuts under the Tories alongside an utter failure to invest in sufficient community care facilities.

“Social care services have been savaged with multi-billion cuts and given their reliance on international staff will be devastated by the restrictive immigration rules. Tory ministers are yet again shirking their responsibilities to some of the most vulnerable and elderly in society.”

Caroline Abrahams of Age UK said: “Being forced to stay in hospital when you are medically fit to leave is utterly soul-destroying, undermines your chances of making a full recovery, and is an enormous waste of public money too.

“For all these reasons we know that the NHS has been trying really hard to keep these numbers down, but many older people who find themselves stranded in hospital need good social care to leave safely and there’s not nearly enough to go round.

“The prime minister has promised to fix social care and for the sake of the NHS as well as of older people it’s crucial that he keeps his word.”

The impact is spread unevenly around the country. In Manchester, the number of delayed days nearly trebled between December 2018 and December 2019, while in Calderdale the number of delayed rose almost five-fold.

A spokesperson for Manchester Health and Care Commissioning attributed the rise to a growing population and increased hospital attendances. Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group said December 2018 had been a particularly strong month.

While there are numerous reasons for delayed transfers, the biggest drivers of the recent rises across England are delays in provision of non-acute NHS care, people waiting for a social care assessment, and acute patients awaiting a care package in their own home.

Delays caused by council care services and the NHS are both rising, but council-driven delays fell heavily between 2016 and 2018. Ian Hudspeth of the Local Government Association said: “Thanks to the hard work of councils’ social care teams, the NHS has seen delayed transfers of care attributable to social care fall by more than half a million over the past two years.

“The forthcoming Budget is an important opportunity to address the crucial issue of funding while looking ahead to finding a longer-term, cross-party solution to adult social care, which allows councils to focus equally on preventing people going to hospital in the first place.”

An NHS spokesperson said: “19,000 fewer bed days were lost in 2019 than 2018, with on average 50 fewer people delayed every day. Thanks to the hard work of NHS and social care staff over the last two and a half years, considerably fewer people now experience a delay in leaving hospital, with the number of delays 28% lower in December 2019 than it was at its peak.”

Delayed transfers fell from late 2016 to spring 2019 – hence the lower annual total in 2019 than 2018 – but they have been rising markedly since.