Tuesday 21 July 2015

Hospital Discharge - a silent scandal.

This is a BBC report dealing with a survey into the discharge of patients from NHS hospitals. It follows perhaps 15 years where hospitals have been pressured (a pressure they have largely been delighted with) to discharge patients as soon as possible.
 
The result is that decade on decade, hospital admission periods have been falling, with a corresponding saving of money and a theoretical increase in the number of beds available.
 
Except that over the same period, the number of beds has been falling which means that the savings have just been used to reduce costs and not to increase operations.
 
The problem? Readmissions following discharge have been growing too - it's making people ill sending them home too early.
 
The answer? A low dependency ward with reduced staffing for another days convalescence.
 
Because sending elderly people home too soon increases the number of Accident and Emergency admissions when it all goes wrong.
 
Here's today's BBC report (21/7/15); 
 
The way hospitals discharge patients is probably contributing to high levels of readmission, a year-long Healthwatch England inquiry has found.
 
It said many hospitals failed to notify relatives or check patients had any accommodation before discharging them.

The watchdog looked at data from Freedom of Information requests, patient surveys and more than 3,000 patient reports to its local teams.

Anna Bradley, who chairs Healthwatch England, called some of it "shocking".
"There is a huge human and financial cost of getting discharge wrong," she added.
One report said an 81-year-old stroke survivor had been sent home in a taxi while his wife was told he was being transferred to a rehabilitation centre.

Another involved a young man with severe mental health problems who had been discharged with no consultation with his psychiatrist and no treatment.

Of the 120 hospital trusts that responded to Freedom of Information requests:
  • half were failing to record whether the patient's home environment was suitable
  • a third were failing to record whether the patient's GP or carer had been notified of new medicines
In 2014, the National Audit Office reported the NHS saw a million readmissions within 30 days of discharge, costing an estimated £2.4bn a year.

A spokesman for NHS England said hospitals should be making sure patients are appropriately discharged.

"We need to ensure appropriate care is put in place before a patient leaves hospital which needs strong joint working across the health service."

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

Sorry about the gap since I last Blogged - I was checking hospital facilities at first hand - I broke my back.

If you want to know what is going on you can check out my other Blog on;

helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

Home:  helpmesortoutthenhs.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com