Health written question – answered at on 17 January 2011.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health
(1) what steps his Department is taking to prevent bed blocking in NHS facilities;
(2) what estimate his Department has made of the number of patients who are in hospital because of difficulty in determining a discharge destination.
Information on delayed transfers of care has never been collected in the level of detail necessary to estimate how many are due to difficulty determining the discharge destination, because the essential business needs of the Department cannot justify the additional administrative burden on the bodies that would have to provide the data.
It is the responsibility of the national health service and its local partners, including social service departments, to ensure that no patient remains in a hospital bed for longer than clinically necessary, and that any ongoing care and support can begin promptly and the individual is restored to independent living in the community as quickly as possible.
This requires better working across the NHS and social care and so we have provided the funding and clear direction in the NHS Operating Framework for the NHS and local government to make this happen. In October, we announced £70 million for re-ablement in 2010-11. From April, this will rise to £150 million and after that, £300 million each year has been earmarked for re-ablement up to March 2015. The NHS Operating Framework 2011-12 requires the NHS to work with its social care partners in developing plans for investing in re-ablement services.
In addition, we announced that following a successful efficiency drive, the Department is able to make an extra £162 million available to the NHS for transfer to social care to spend in this financial year on helping people to leave hospital more quickly, get settled back at home with the support they need, and to prevent unnecessary admissions to hospital.
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