Clause 4 - Liability to make delayed discharge payments
Community Care (Delayed Discharge etc.) Bill
4:45 pm
Ms Jacqui Smith (Minister of State, Department of Health; Redditch, Labour)
I shall finish explaining what we are doing, then hon. Members can intervene. Secondly, hospitals will be judged and therefore rewarded on the basis of their ability to control readmission rates. Thirdly, under the new financial flows, acute trusts will not receive funding for patients who are readmitted to hospital within a certain period, so there will be a financial incentive for them to ensure that a patient is genuinely ready for discharge before leaving an acute hospital bed. We do not take the matter lightly—we shall ensure that we tackle it through guidance, performance management and financial flows and incentives that are built into the system.